Vincent Cable: Is the Minister aware of the dilemma faced by many seriously disabled people who reject the highest level of care available because it involves a transfer from social services and direct payments, which give them control over their lives, to the national health service, where they do not?

Ben Bradshaw: I am always happy to meet Members. If my hon. Friend has specific examples or evidence of where he thinks the reorganisation has not gone well, I will happily look into them even before we have a chance to meet. I do not think it makes sense, however, for Ministers in Whitehall to second-guess the way that local health services and ambulance trusts organise their services. I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware that three additional ambulances have been taken on to help with the reorganisation. The accident and emergency services were not centralised in Burnley, and I am, of course, aware that concern was expressed there in particular, on account of that fact, but, interestingly, the figures do not point to a large increase in the number of people presenting themselves in Blackburn instead; there has only been about a 5 per cent. change.

Alan Johnson: I agree that we should do more, and we are doing. Fluorosis, the discolouration to which my hon. Friend referred, is caused by children eating lots of toothpaste. Guidance has gone out from the chief dental officer to the parents of very small children saying that the amount of toothpaste on the toothbrush should be about the size of a pea. That guidance contains graphic illustrations, too, to ensure that young mothers in particular are aware of the dangers of putting too much toothpaste on the brush. That is not to say that that is potentially fatal, but it does cause problems with fluorosis. My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the need for that guidance, which went out only a couple of weeks ago.

Mr. Speaker: Order. May I say that these are topical questions and are really for the Back-Benchers? We cannot have several supplementaries from those on the Front Benches.

Andrew Rosindell: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to define the Union flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; to make provision about the display and flying of the Union flag; and for connected purposes.
	My Bill will affirm the Union flag, established on 1 January 1801, as the national flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It will define the Union flag as one that can truly represent all British people, including those from Her Majesty's Crown dependencies and overseas territories who have shown such loyalty to the Crown over many centuries.
	I seek to uphold the Union flag for everyone to honour and take pride in, and I want positively to encourage the flying of our flag from public buildings the length and breadth of these islands—not just on the rare days designated for the flying of the flag, but on every day throughout the year. It is time we discarded the outdated convention that the Union flag should fly only on certain days; we should follow the fine example of Her Majesty the Queen who displays the Union flag from Buckingham palace every day except when the royal standard is flown.
	The Union flag, or the Union Jack as it is widely known, is a popular modern symbol for most Britons and those with British ancestry—a magnificent emblem representing an unshakeable common bond between all British peoples the world over. The Union flag represents each and every one of us: English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, Channel Islanders, Manxmen, Falkland Islanders, Gibraltarians and all Her Majesty's subjects in the British overseas territories—indeed, the Union flag is their flag, too.
	Another reason for the Bill is to reclaim the Union flag from those who would use it for narrow or extreme political ends, and from those who ridicule our flag on grounds of political correctness or for their own nationalist ambitions. Our flag must be one that all Britons feel able to fly with pride, overriding other divisions that may exist in our nation. In many countries the national flag is a unifying symbol that flies proudly throughout the land: Australia, New Zealand and Canada are the best examples, but in the stars and stripes of the United States and the flags of countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland we see examples where the national flag is flown far and wide, strengthening national identity. The idea that it is somehow not very British to fly the flag is outdated and divisive, and it is time for that old attitude to be discarded.
	My Bill will give everyone the right to fly the Union flag all year round, not just from Government buildings in Whitehall but from local town, community, civic and village halls, and from police and fire stations, hospitals, schools, clubs, businesses, offices, shops and private homes, if people choose to do so. Let us start here, today, by flying the Union flag every day from the Houses of Parliament, so that all visitors to London can see our flag proudly fluttering on the mother of Parliaments whenever they visit London. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) has pointed out to me, we should be proud of our heritage and more forward in displaying the symbol that unites us all. That symbol can also be highly significant for tourism. Every visitor is a potential ambassador for Britain, and our flag could be better used to promote our country, our heritage and our people.
	I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), who proposed a similar Bill in 1996 when he called for the Union flag to fly freely throughout the nation and for the removal of planning restrictions that prevented that from happening. He, too, called for schools to fly the flag every day. I would like to see that idea adopted. Perhaps a different pupil could be invited to have the honour of raising the flag at the start of each school day. There is nothing more important than instilling in our younger people pride in our flag and our nation.
	Hon. Members may not be fully aware that the Union flag has never been affirmed in law. I believe it is time that it was. The first Union flag was adopted by royal proclamation by King James on 12 April 1606. It combined the flag of the cross of St. Andrew for Scotland, and the flag of the cross of St. George for England. It was principally for use at sea. The Union with Ireland in 1801 brought the cross of St. Patrick into the flag. The result was the modern Union flag, established by royal proclamation by King George III on 1 January 1801. Nevertheless, the Union flag has never been affirmed as the civil national flag of the United Kingdom. Instead, it has existed only as a Government flag or a royal banner.
	In its detailed research, the Flag Institute discovered two significant references to the Union flag in Parliament. On 14 July 1908, in response to a parliamentary question regarding the status of the flag, the Earl of Crewe, on behalf of His Majesty's Government in another place, declared that
	"the Union Jack should be regarded as the National flag"—[ Official Report, 14 July 1908; Vol. 192, c. 579.]
	Nearly 25 years later, the Home Secretary, Sir John Gilmour, stated:
	"The Union Flag is the national flag and may properly be flown by any British subject on land."—[ Official Report, 27 June 1933; Vol. 279, c. 1324.]
	Those two statements are the nearest that the Union flag has ever come to being constitutionally endorsed by Parliament in its popularly accepted role. Consequently, the status of the Union flag has been the subject of controversy and misunderstanding for many years, and there is uncertainty among some people about its constitutional position and legal standing.
	My Bill will affirm once and for all that the Union flag is the official flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and it will proclaim it to be the flag of all British peoples. It will also formally recognise that the name, Union Jack, can be commonly used when referring to the Union flag. I am indebted to Captain Malcolm Farrow OBE RN, president of the Flag Institute, who has provided me with a wealth of information about the Union flag and its progress and evolution through the centuries, and I commend the work of the Flag Institute to hon. Members.
	Some may feel that the status of our flag is unimportant and others may even misinterpret my passion as misplaced patriotism, but nothing could be further from the truth. I believe that my Bill will be the first step in wresting our national flag from the hands of extremists and giving it back to the loyal people of this country, whatever their race, colour, creed or religion. Our flag is a symbol that instils unity and loyalty throughout our nation, so let us today proclaim it as the flag that can truly represent all members of our great British family. I commend the Bill to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Andrew Rosindell, Mr. Andrew Turner, Mr. Lindsay Hoyle, Angela Watkinson, Mr. Henry Bellingham, Mr. Tobias Ellwood, Geraldine Smith, Mr. Martyn Jones, Mr. Nigel Dodds, Mr. David Jones and David Mundell.

Lisbon Treaty (No. 3)
	 — 
	(3rd allotted day)

Jack Straw: The problem for the hon. Gentleman is this: a manifesto was put forward by the Conservative party in 1970; I do not know whether he voted Conservative in that election, but it is beyond peradventure that he was alive for it. That manifesto said that if the Conservative party was elected to Government—and it was, on 18 June 1970—it would seek to negotiate our entry to the European Union— [Interruption.] Somebody said sotto voce that there was no charter of human rights; I shall come back to that. The House voted, as the other place did, in favour of membership. Four years later, the Labour Government said that they wished to renegotiate certain aspects of our membership arrangements, and that was put to a referendum. That was endorsed by the British people by a margin of two to one.
	The European Court of Justice has been fundamental to the operation of the European Union ever since it was formed. That is my answer to the hon. Gentleman; I know that he disagrees with the mechanisms of the European Union, but it is for him and the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) to have that argument in the Conservative party and commit it to what is in my judgment its most consistent position, although I disagree with it: leaving the European Union.

Dominic Grieve: The Lord Chancellor has rapidly touched on the fundamental issue. I agree that the adherence of the European Union to the European convention on human rights is an absolutely key issue in promoting human rights within the Union. However, he needs to explain to the House why, if that adherence is going to take place—it is long overdue—the charter of fundamental rights should then be imposed in the manner proposed by the treaty of Lisbon.

Jack Straw: I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that I honestly think that the Opposition are trying to make silk purses out of sows' ears. They have no case. Let me go through the charter and recite a series of rights that are already accepted across Europe as being fundamental to the way in which our democracies operate. When the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) or the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) stand up to speak, the first thing that I would like to hear is which of these rights they object to. Are they against
	"respect for...private and family life"?
	Are they against
	"the right to liberty and security"?
	Are they against—

John Redwood: We do not disagree with individual rights—we disagree with the legal process which means that they are defined and imposed on us instead of defined and imposed from here.

Jack Straw: There is provenance for every one of the rights contained in the charter. [Hon. Members: "Provenance?"] Yes, provenance. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that he objects to a particular right, when he comes to make his speech, let him say in his own way to which of the rights he objects.

Jack Straw: Yes, I can, although many of those rights applied in any event. I can also say what the benefit is of assembling those rights together in a single document is. It is that the people of Britain, among many others, can see what they are in a single document, rather than having to delve into various obscure—

Jack Straw: Not all from me, for Pete's sake! I have given way to the hon. Gentleman already. I will give way to him later, but now I must make some progress.
	As the House knows, the charter was originally drafted as a declaratory document agreed at the Cologne summit in 1999. Before agreeing that the charter should have treaty status, the Government insisted that greater clarity was required to define precisely what the scope and effect of such a status would be, which is the answer to the hon. Member for Beaconsfield. We pledged that nothing in the charter of fundamental rights would give national or European courts any new powers to strike down or reinterpret UK law, including with regard to labour and social legislation. That is what we have delivered.
	We have also negotiated an extensive package of safeguards. Four measures in particular have been put in place: the new wording of article 6 of the Lisbon treaty; the charter's horizontal articles, found in articles 51 and 52; the revised official explanations accompanying the charter; and the binding protocol on page 172. Individually and taken together, those measures represent a substantial degree of protection for British interests. I will deal with them in turn.
	The amended article 6 states:
	"The provisions of the Charter shall not extend in any way the competencies of the Union as defined in the Treaties. The rights, freedoms and principles in the Charter shall be interpreted in accordance with the general principles...of the Charter governing its interpretation and application and with due regard to the explanations...in the Charter".
	The horizontal articles contained in title VII stipulate:
	"The provisions of the Charter are addressed to the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union with due regard for the principle of subsidiarity and",
	crucially,
	"to the Member States only when they are implementing Union law...The Charter does not extend the field of application of Union law beyond the powers of the Union or establish any new power or task for the Union, or modify powers and tasks as defined in the Treaties."
	In addition, the official explanations to the charter, which indicate the source of the rights and principles it contains, provide further clarification:
	"The explanations drawn up as a way of providing guidance in the interpretation of the Charter shall be given due regard by the courts... and...Member States".
	The explanations demonstrate that the charter does not create any new rights, but reaffirms rights that are already recognised.
	The final measure, the protocol, which we have secured along with Poland, completes the protection. The language is unusually clear for an EU instrument:
	"The Charter does not extend the ability of the Court of Justice of the EU, or any court or tribunal of Poland or the United Kingdom, to find that laws, regulations or administrative provisions, practices or action of Poland or of the United Kingdom are inconsistent with the fundamental rights, freedoms and principles that it reaffirms. In particular, and for the avoidance of doubt, nothing in Title IV of the Charter creates justiciable rights applicable to Poland or the United Kingdom except in so far as Poland or the United Kingdom has provided for such rights in its national law."
	Then there is a further limb to the protocol.

Malcolm Rifkind: While it may indeed be the case that the charter does not provide for new rights, the European Court will for the first time be able to interpret that charter in countries where it is justiciable and thereby—the charter is drafted in very broad terms—effectively make major new law, as supreme courts do around the world. Does that not explain why the protocol is crucial, but only if it is watertight? Will the Secretary of State explain why it was not made clear when the terms of the protocol were negotiated that it would apply regardless of any other European treaty or other law made by the European Court? Without that, there is a real risk, notwithstanding the generally welcome protocol, that a loophole within it may negate its purpose.

Denis MacShane: Let us focus on a pledge and a promise made by his party leader? Is it Conservative policy to withdraw from the social chapter if they form a Government?

David Lidington: The right hon. Gentleman knows what my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said about seeking to restore national Parliaments' control of employment measures. He will have to wait with bated breath for the detailed presentation of Conservative policy, but I can promise him that his appetite will be satisfied well before the next election. [Interruption.] I am always impressed by the way in which Labour Members become increasingly excited by the prospect of what the future Conservative Government will do.
	The right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) tried to come to the Lord Chancellor's rescue, but Conservative Members know what the Lord Chancellor said about his commitments on consulting the people, we know what he really thinks and we still cherish the hope, even at this late stage, that he will be prepared to step up to say what he privately believes about the need to consult the people.
	There is a sense of poetic justice in our debating human rights today, because yesterday's events and the treatment meted out to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), and the hon. Members for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer), for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) and for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) remind us that the rights to free speech, due process and a fair trial need to be defended today with vigilance and determination. The Prime Minister must have set some new standard in ordering the persecution of four Members of Parliament for seeking to deliver something that not only they, but he had promised the British people at the previous general election.
	Let me deal with the motion, the treaty's content and its human rights elements. Three key elements of the treaty should concern us this afternoon. Paragraph 2 of article 6 provides for the European Union to accede to the European convention on human rights, but the Secretary of State did not give us a likely timetable for that. It might help if the Minister for Europe's response threw more light on that proposed time scale and on whether negotiating problems must still be overcome before accession.
	The Secretary of State assured my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) that in the event of a clash of judgments between the two courts, the European Court of Human Rights' decision would take precedence, but I can find nothing in the treaty text to support the Government's assertion. Ministers have a duty to explain in much greater detail exactly how such a conflict would be reconciled.

David Lidington: The problem with the right hon. Lady's assertion is that we do not yet know what the text of any accession agreement between the EU and the ECHR will be. The language that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) quoted indicates that the European treaties already contain provisions that tilt the argument in the opposite direction.
	The Government have done a somersault on children's rights. In the early stages, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) tried hard to delete any mention of children's rights from the text, on the grounds that its inclusion would be an extension of EU competence. Now, Ministers hail the inclusion of a reference to children's rights as some negotiating triumph. The Government still refuse to come clean over whether the words do matter and they made a concession of some significance during negotiations, or whether they believe that the reference is innocuous and changes nothing about EU competence. In the latter case, it hardly merits the fanfares that they have been busy blowing.
	The Government's failure to be straight with Parliament and the British people on that point encapsulates what is wrong with their approach to this treaty and how, in particular, they have dealt with the impact of the charter of fundamental rights—the subject that will, rightly, be the focus of most of today's debate, the prime purpose of which should be to probe the Government on their answers to two questions. First, does the fact that the Lisbon treaty gives legal force to the charter of fundamental rights transfer powers, either actually or potentially, from national Parliaments and Governments to the institutions of the Union, and especially to the Court of Justice? Secondly, if the treaty does have such an effect, do the words of the protocol that the Government have secured provide the safeguards for this Parliament that Ministers claim?
	We know for certain that the Government fought hard to resist any incorporation of the charter in the treaty. In fact, the notes used by the right hon. Member for Neath at the time of the convention said that the objective of the British Government was to ensure that the charter was relegated from the text of the treaty into "only a protocol". The use of the word "only" in that context should lead us to question of the significance of the protocol to which the Government attach such importance today.
	The Government rely on three basic arguments to defend their position.

David Lidington: Yes. I want to deal with exactly that point in greater detail.
	The Government have relied on three arguments to defend their position. First, they claim that the charter is nothing more than a declaratory statement and that it merely codifies rights that already exist. The Foreign Secretary asserted that as recently as 18 October last year, when he wrote to the chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee to say that the charter
	"only records existing rights; it does not create any new rights".
	Earlier this afternoon, the Secretary of State for Justice said that the charter describes rights that already exist.
	Secondly, like the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), the Government argue that the words of article 6 of the consolidated treaty, together with the so-called horizontal articles of the charter, protect all member states—not only the UK or Poland—from the creation of new rights by the institutions of the Union.
	Thirdly, Ministers claim that the protocol to the treaty in respect of this country and Poland alone makes it impossible for decisions of the European Court or the Commission to overturn the definitions of rights determined by our domestic law. The trouble is that when one starts to examine those claims in any detail, one realises that the safeguards appear less than watertight, as the European Scrutiny Committee found in its most recent report.
	One also has to challenge the Government on a point of basic principle. If, as Ministers say, all the rights that are included in the charter already exist in both domestic law and the European convention on human rights, what is the purpose of the charter of fundamental rights being judicable by the European Court of Justice, too?
	The charter sets out a number of rights that would, as a consequence of Lisbon, become for the first time rights that are embodied in EU law and judicable by the ECJ, even if they are not new rights. Most obviously, the recreation in the Lisbon treaty of the EU as a unitary legal entity means that subjects such as policing and criminal justice laws passed after Lisbon could be interpreted by the ECJ with the Court applying the rights and principles set out in the charter.
	The treaty goes beyond the EU simply signing up to the European convention on human rights. The charter also includes a number of articles derived from other international agreements that have been entered into bilaterally by one or more of the member states. Those rights, too, exist in those member states but they have not hitherto been part of EU law and subject to the jurisdiction of the ECJ. In practice, when we hear the Government's arguments and look at what Ministers are doing and saying, we find that they are not behaving as though they believe that no new rights are being created. If there were no new rights and no new interpretations permitted of existing rights, why is there a need for the protocol at all?
	The same applies to the argument put by the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton. If article 6, and in particular paragraphs 1 and 2, do not under any circumstances permit the extension of EU competence or the interpretation by the court of what is meant by EU competence, it is difficult to see the justification for the protocol in which the Government place such store.

David Lidington: I think that the learned professor's arguments do not match the arguments advanced by the Government to justify the contradiction in their approach. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton argues that everything is safe but, if that is so, there is no need for the protocol that the Government have negotiated.
	The Government point to paragraph 4 of the charter's article 112. It requires that rights must be "interpreted in harmony" with the
	"constitutional traditions common to the Member States."
	Ministers have argued that the ECJ will take clear account of what happens in individual member states before it gives a ruling. The problem, once again, is that the decision about whether a particular interpretation of rights is "in harmony" with national traditions will be made not by national Governments or Parliaments but by the ECJ.
	The ECJ will not be under a duty to look separately at each country's national traditions. Instead, the wording of the article makes it explicit that it will look at the traditions common to all member states. Where national traditions differ, ECJ judges will decide what balance they wish to strike. The president of the ECJ could not have made that clearer when he said that
	"common constitutional traditions do not form a direct source of Community law and the Court of Justice is not bound by them".
	The trouble with the Government's approach generally is that they consistently understate the importance of the debate about the ECJ's developing jurisprudence, which introduces a dynamic into a system that the Government seem to regard as frozen, now and for all time.
	Let us look at the protocol that Ministers argue will stop the court overturning the human rights provisions in our national law. The Government have placed particular emphasis on the fact that the UK has an exemption from the normal rules governing labour law. The Opposition and some Labour Members may have differences over policy, but we share a concern to get greater certainty about what is being proposed.
	Title 4—the so-called solidarity title—deals with employment and industrial relations, but it begs as many questions as it answers. The protocol says that it is needed for the avoidance of doubt, but presumably such doubts continue to exist about the court's power to interpret and overrule domestic law as that touches on the other 42 articles of the charter of fundamental rights. If there is not any doubt about that—if the UK's position is safeguarded—why is paragraph 1.2 needed at all?
	The fundamental question for the Government goes deeper. Let us assume that Ministers are right to say that the protocol will stop the ECJ from striking down UK laws directly. That still leaves the question of how our law will be changed over time by ECJ decisions on rights in countries that are not subject to that protocol. The Government have produced no plausible argument that we can avoid our law being changed as a result of decisions about the charter being made in respect of other countries.
	The Opposition have not invented that problem. The European Scrutiny Committee focused on it very strongly in its third report of the present Session, which was a follow-up report on the intergovernmental conference.

David Lidington: I thought that our right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea put the point well and that the Lord Chancellor, with customary skill, avoided providing a persuasive answer, just as the Government have been unable, as far as I can see, to provide a persuasive answer to the comments of the European Scrutiny Committee.
	Paragraph 38 of the Committee's report said plainly:
	"If the ECJ gives a ruling in a case arising outside the UK on a measure which also applies in the UK, the duty to interpret the measure in accordance with that ruling arises, not under the Charter, but under the UK's other Treaty obligations. Nothing in the Protocol appears to excuse the UK from this obligation."
	In paragraph 40, the Committee said that
	"we doubt if it is possible to guarantee that it"—
	the charter—
	"will not be developed and amplified by the ECJ. We equally doubt if it is possible to guarantee that the ECJ will not draw on the Charter as a new source for interpreting measures of Union law such as Directives".
	In paragraph 41, the Committee concluded:
	"If the ECJ does interpret a measure of Union law in this way, we believe the resulting interpretation would be binding in the UK, because of the UK's treaty obligations, notably the duty of sincere co-operation under Article 4(3) EU. These obligations are not excluded or restricted by the Protocol. On the contrary, and as the recitals make clear, the Protocol is subject to those obligations."

David Lidington: I shall try to make some progress and bring my remarks to a close. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) for making an important point and further drawing out that element of the European Scrutiny Committee's report.
	One must bear it in mind that any new legislation initiated by the European Commission, and affecting the entire European Union, is certain to follow the decisions made by the European Court of Justice on specific cases. Even if the protocol means that the United Kingdom is exempt for a time, once a decision has been made in respect of, say, Austria or Romania, subsequent legislation from the Commission on that topic will follow not the position in the United Kingdom but the situation brought about by the ECJ judgment. That legislation will then become binding on the United Kingdom.
	The only way in which the protocol could insulate the United Kingdom from the impact of court decisions based on the charter would be either for the protocol to have included the kind of clause described by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), or for the Court of Justice to permit the development of two separate systems of jurisprudence within the European Union—one for the United Kingdom and Poland, and the other for all the other member states. I see nothing in the charter, nothing in the treaty and nothing at all in the traditions of the European Court of Justice that makes that seem remotely likely.
	I fear that once again on this issue, as on others in respect of Lisbon, the Government have been trying to pull the wool over our eyes. We have had from successive Ministers a series of different positions on the charter of fundamental rights. We first had the then Minister for Europe, the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), saying that it was of no more significance than  The Beano. Then, as recently as last June, the former Prime Minister declared that
	"we will not accept a treaty that allows the Charter of Fundamental Rights to change UK law in any way."
	A month later in their White Paper the Government had slithered into a position where they were committed simply to ensure
	"that our existing labour and social legislation remains intact".
	Back in June, Tony Blair was insisting:
	"It is absolutely clear that we have an opt-out from both the charter and judicial and home affairs"—[ Official Report, 25 June 2007; Vol. 462, c. 37.]
	and just weeks after that, the current Minister for Europe told the Scrutiny Committee:
	"The UK specific protocol which the UK secured is not an 'opt out' from the Charter. Rather, the protocol clarifies the effect that the Charter will have in the UK."
	By January this year the Minister was saying that
	"the United Kingdom has neither sought nor achieved an opt-out from the charter of fundamental rights"—[ Official Report, 28 January 2008; Vol. 471, c. 34.]—
	a fairly shameless rewriting of history, even by the standards of the present Government.
	The British people deserved their Government to speak to them on these issues with both clarity and candour. Instead, again and again, we have been subjected to spin. Nothing that the Secretary of State has said this afternoon has persuaded me that we can have confidence in the Government's assurances and promises any more than we were able to believe those that they have repeated to Parliament and the public over the past few years. For that reason, I ask the House to support the Opposition amendment tonight.

Andrew Dismore: We have had a great deal of discussion of the charter of fundamental rights. I am not sure that I can add substantially to it, other than to say that I believe it brings existing rights together and makes them more visible, as the charter says, drawing them from a variety of different sources—civil, political, economic and social.
	Although we have the protocol, there is nothing in the charter itself that we could realistically object to. Indeed, it would do a great deal to strengthen our rights in this country, and I would like to see it in force in the United Kingdom, even though the protocol ensures that it does not apply. As it is drawn, the charter applies only in relation to European Union law or action taken under the treaty. Although the charter is made legally binding by the treaty, that is only in the context of European law. It contains not just rights but aspirational principles.
	The Fundamental Rights Agency has the job of monitoring compliance with the charter. The agency emerged in 2003 under the Italian presidency and was drawn from the existing Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. Much of its residual experience is drawn from that and that is reflected in the future work pattern of the Fundamental Rights Agency. The agency was negotiated under the UK presidency as a first-pillar agency under article 308 of the Nice treaty. Its duty is to enforce the charter of fundamental rights and, although other human rights instruments could inform its work, the FRA cannot actually enforce them. Its job is to monitor member states and EU institutions. It is also its job to monitor accession states but only after accession has been completed, which is a problem. I may be wrong, but I do not think that the charter and the FRA are taken into account during the negotiations for accession. This happens only after an accession agreement has been signed. That reflects a gap in the effectiveness of the agency and the charter. A much stronger lever could have been provided in the accession processes for Bulgaria and Romania, for example, where significant human rights issues needed to be addressed before the accession process was completed. That is doubly so in the case of Turkey where significant human rights issues have to be addressed before the accession process is completed.
	There has much debate about why we should have the charter—and, indeed, the FRA—when we already have the European convention on human rights and the Council of Europe, but until the EU accedes to the European convention, however, there is no monitoring of EU institutions for human rights compliance without the FRA. The agency can ultimately look at the gap in performance between the EU institutions such as the Commission and the Parliament.

Andrew Dismore: I will be coming to the question of accession later in my speech.
	At the moment, I am talking about the Fundamental Rights Agency, which has an obligation to complement the Council of Europe so as to avoid duplication. The Council of Europe's responsibility is to set the standards for human rights—such as those that we see in the convention—to monitor compliance with those standards and to provide a judicial function through the European Court. On the other hand, the European Union has a legislative function and a political function and much better enforcement capabilities. It seems to me, therefore, that the agency's job should be to develop recommendations from the Council of Europe and to implement them in such a way as to ensure that standards are met at EU level. I am pleased that a memorandum of understanding was signed by the EU and the Council of Europe in May last year.
	I have some doubts about the independence of the FRA, however, and whether it complies with the Paris principles. According to those principles, it should be independent, but, given the way in which the regulations that drew it up were framed, I doubt whether they fully comply with those requirements. Its work is to gather information, analysis and reports and to take an advisory role. It does not have investigative powers or powers of scrutiny, which is a problem. That is a major gap in the agency's work.
	Scrutiny is not among the activities set out in article 5. The lack of scrutiny of EU legislation for compliance with human rights is one of the big gaps. That process is pretty well missing. I believe that the European Scrutiny Committee made a recommendation about this, as did the Committee in the Lords in 2006. I suppose I am advocating something similar to part of the role of my own Committee, which scrutinises domestic legislation for its compliance with human rights standards. It is said that the Commission's job is to ensure compliance, but that raises the issue of who monitors the Commission's work, a point raised by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve). Realistically, that should be the role of the Fundamental Rights Agency, although it does not yet have it. Nor, I suspect, does it have the relevant expertise. It does not have the indispensable legal advisers that my Committee has, nor a partner equivalent to ours—the Ministry of Justice—that has an overarching responsibility to ensure compliance and to co-ordinate across government. Ultimately, that should be part of the presidency's job.
	Human rights scrutiny should be done at the earliest possible stage of European legislation—long before it reaches member state Parliaments, where any such scrutiny will be cursory at most. My Committee does not have the resources to scrutinise European legislation properly for the purposes of human rights; as it stands, we are pretty stretched doing our domestic job. That important aspect should be addressed.
	As I mentioned, the Fundamental Rights Agency is a first-pillar organisation, although originally it was intended to be a third-pillar one. The Lisbon treaty, of course, abolishes all references to pillars, but regulations for the agency remain first-pillar arrangements, although under article 31 there are provisions for review. It seems to me that in practice it would be impossible for the agency to do its job effectively if it were simply a first-pillar organisation. For example, to monitor and scrutinise effective action against people trafficking involves the full range of the three former pillars: not only European institutions, but police, justice and crime—and, I suppose, foreign affairs, given the issue of source countries. If we are to enforce on the issue of people trafficking, we need to recognise that.
	The work programme of the Fundamental Rights Agency is interesting. Many British universities have also been involved in its work. The survey on discrimination against and victimisation of migrants is similar to the British crime survey. I am pleased to see that my old university, Warwick law school, is working on good practice in ethnic profiling by police and border forces, and I am sure it will produce an excellent report. As a result, there is analysis of how migrants are treated by the media. I wish the school luck on that; my Committee did some work on that issue and found it difficult.
	Edinburgh and Glasgow universities are supporting work on pathways to violent radicalisation, although I think it potentially rather simplistic. There is also work on homophobia and the protection of children's rights in the light of the new rights in the treaty—objective indicators are being considered to measure progress in that respect. There is also holocaust education, on which we have a good record.
	Earlier, the issue of EU accession to the European convention on human rights arose. It arose because of a 1994 European Court of Justice decision that the European Union could not accede. The Lisbon treaty, of course, provides for that mechanism. The real problem at the moment is getting the Council of Europe to agree—that requires unanimity on its part. All the countries involved have now ratified, save Russia, which I hope will get around to doing so before too long.
	The risk of the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights developing divergent views on similar issues has been raised. It is important to recognise that those who advocate that line accept, effectively, that the charter and the European convention effectively deal with the same sort of issues—otherwise, the risk would not even be discussed. The answer is to look at the position of the ECJ as an EU institution. If the EU accedes to the European convention, it does so with all its institutions, including the ECJ. Effectively, therefore, the ECJ itself, as an EU institution, would become subordinate to the convention and the rulings of the ECHR. It would have to comply with views expressed by the European Court of Human Rights as arbiter of the convention. The circle is easily and properly squared by simply looking at the status of the different institutions that would follow from that.
	I am pleased that the charter incorporates children's rights into the treaty under chapter III, which covers equality. It is a pity that that will not apply in the UK, because that might help us to deal with the reservation that the UK has expressed as regards the convention on the rights of the child in relation to immigration matters, which is now under review by the Government. I hope that we do not have to rely on the charter to resolve that.
	Several issues arise in relation to the protocol. Nothing in the charter creates new justiciable rights, partly because of subsidiarity and partly because the solidarity heads are not rights as such but are more by way of principles. Even if they were rights, it is possible in the long term that the ECJ might make them enforceable. The protocol therefore becomes belt-and-braces protection. Having looked at the terms of the charter, that does not particularly worry me. The charter is an excellent document that sets out a whole series of excellent rights. It should inform our own future debates on a British Bill of Rights, which would, I hope, include most of the things that are set out in the charter, including the social, political and economic rights. That would be a huge step forward for our society and our democracy. I rather regret the reservation of the UK's position on the protocol. This is a very progressive document. We have nothing to fear from it and there would be an awful lot to be gained if it applied in the UK.

Edward Davey: I think that has already happened, so I am rather surprised by the hon. Gentleman's intervention.
	If one then wants to argue about the impact of the charter—I do not believe that it introduces any rights, as I have said—or one is concerned about whether there are enough safeguards and protections, one only has to read the text in the surrounding documents. The preamble to the charter is specific and clear about the ambitions in the charter being deliberately limited. If one is still worried, one should look at the treaty of Lisbon. I quoted the second paragraph of article 6.1, which is absolutely clear, in an intervention on the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington), but he gave no answer. One can then look at article 51.2, in chapter VII of the charter of fundamental rights, which could not be clearer:
	"This Charter does not establish any new power or task for the Community or the Union, or modify powers and tasks defined by the Treaties."
	Again and again, in all the documentation, the fears that are sometimes put forward are dealt with.

William Cash: I have heard a great deal this afternoon about there being no new rights. Citizenship of the Union currently complements national citizenship, which has enormous implications for the charter, but the new arrangements are that citizenship of the Union shall be "in addition" to national citizenship. Those are two completely different matters, which has enormous implications for how we are to be treated under the European Court of Justice.

Colin Burgon: Not at this stage.
	Viking Line is a Finnish ferry company. In 2003, it decided to re-flag its vessel the Rosella in order to register it in Estonia and employ an Estonian crew on Estonian pay and conditions, thus cutting its wage costs by 60 per cent. The Finnish shipping union appealed to the International Transport Workers Federation in London, which sent a circular to all affiliates telling them not to enter into negotiations with Viking. The shipping union called for Viking to maintain existing pay and conditions, and then threatened to strike.
	Once Estonia joined the EU in 2004, Viking sued the ITWF in the High Court for restricting its "freedom of establishment". The case was referred to the European Court of Justice, which ruled that in future any strike action affecting that freedom would have to meet stringent legal tests that the court itself could assess. At that point, a danger light went on.
	Although the court did not, on the face of it, rule against the employer, I would argue that the ruling is excellent news for corporate lawyers in the long term. They will be able to threaten trade unions with long and expensive court cases in order to discourage the unions—which do not possess the same resources as big business—from taking collective action against outsourcing or similar corporate behaviour. It also has very alarming implications for basic trade union rights and freedoms. Our right to industrial action has always come from the democratic mandate of the union through its members, according to laws determined by this Parliament. Now it will also need to meet criteria imposed and assessed by unelected European judges.
	Even more serious is the Laval judgment. Although most Members will know exactly what I am talking about, one or two will not, so I shall help them out. Laval is a Latvian company which, in 2004, posted workers from Latvia to work on building sites in Sweden, including the now infamous site at Vaxholm. The Swedish construction union asked the company to agree to the existing collective agreement in the building sector. It refused, instead operating under a Latvian agreement with lower pay scales that undercut the Swedish workers' wages. The Swedish union quite correctly went on strike, and as a consequence Laval's Swedish subsidiary went bust.
	Laval then sued the union for its losses and the case was referred to the European Court of Justice. The Court ruled that the company's freedom to provide services in any member state should not be restricted by having to comply with a non-statutory collective bargaining agreement. In a particularly alarming section of the judgment, the Court argued that, because the EU posted workers directive set out minimum rights, it was unreasonable to force the company to comply with further agreements at local or national level. So instead of EU legislation setting minimum standards of rights at work, we now seem to be in danger of those standards being seen as a maximum.

Denis MacShane: I think that the clock that is timing my hon. Friend's speech has been paused. My hon. Friend is making a powerful point, especially on the Viking case. The Laval case would have been solved had there been a national minimum wage, which Sweden does not have; the company coming in would have had to abide by that. I accept the criticisms my hon. Friend is making, but will he accept that last week the ECJ gave a ruling on employees who have to look after handicapped people at home, which could help 6 million people in this country? It has also helped us with getting pensions for steelworkers and with— [Interruption.] I am sorry, but if my hon. Friend cannot take an intervention, I will sit down.

Colin Burgon: That is an excellent point. These cases show that the EU is moving towards a policy of undermining workers' terms and conditions. I am sure that other Members will make that case today.
	Another aspect of the charter is also of concern to me: that the freedoms of capital seem to have become fundamental rights of the EU. Title II of the charter contains rights such as the freedom to conduct a business, the right to property, freedom of establishment and the freedom to provide services in any member state. Unlike the workers' rights under title IV, they do not appear to be covered by the provisions of article 1, paragraph 2 of the protocol, which states only that title IV cannot create new rights except in so far as they already exist in UK law. The right to provide services and freedom of establishment, which were the key points in the Laval and Viking cases, are not so restrictive. Article 15, which contains them, does not contain the proviso that they only exist in so far as they are already in law. That is one reason why the unequal status of the different titles in the protocol is of particular concern.
	I hope that the Government can reassure us that this is not as significant as it appears to be, because there are concerns that the situation could be made worse still if future EU legislation or Court rulings were to apply those principles even further. For example, the services directive had at its core the principle of freedom of establishment. The directive was intended to liberalise services on free-market principles. In its original form, the directive included areas that we would consider to be public services, such as health. Even more alarmingly, it enshrined the country of origin principle. That principle provided that where services are provided by a company based in a different country, the legislation of the home country would apply, with a few minimal exceptions, such as basic health and safety standards.
	Thankfully, those elements were removed from the directive as a result of pressure from some member states and, eventually, a majority in the European Parliament. The Commission has never fully accepted that, and seems to be finding imaginative ways of bringing those elements back, such as in the recent health directive. In that light, I hope that the Minister can reassure me on a few points. First, is there any danger that by making the freedom of establishment and the right to provide services fundamental EU rights they could become even more powerful tools for big business? Can he assure us that the Court will not give them greater consideration or overrule EU legislation that does not give them sufficient weight?
	Secondly, will the Minister assure this House that the Government will do their utmost to resist any attempt to revive the country of origin principle or any similar measure? Several other hon. Members are waiting to take part in this debate, so I shall simply say that if the EU's direction of travel is increasingly market-oriented and neo-liberal, Ministers may rest assured that many Labour Members will begin to doubt the so-called construct of a social Europe, and that Europe will never engage the hearts and minds of millions of working people across the continent. That needs to be borne in mind as we discuss the European Union's future.

Malcolm Rifkind: The hon. Member for Elmet (Colin Burgon) made a thoughtful speech. He pointed out the significance of judge-made law, which is very relevant to some of the points that I would like to share with the House.
	This debate is meant to be about human rights, but actually it is not about that, because, despite some of the political arguments that are occasionally used, there is an equal commitment to human rights on both sides of the House, from all Members of Parliament. The issue is how we decide what those human rights should be and how we are accountable to the wider electorate whom we serve both in this country and in the other countries of Europe.
	The significance of the protocol that was negotiated by the Government—if it is watertight—is twofold. First, it is important because it is a further step towards the kind of à la carte Europe that I wish to see. I believe that model will enable not only Britain, but many European Union countries that have concerns about excessive integration to reconcile their membership of the European Union. The protocol curbing the power of the European Court is important in that respect. Secondly, it is about the wider issue of the European Union's accountability to the electorate.
	Let me comment briefly on both those fundamental issues. If the protocol works, it will curb, for the first time, the European Court's ability to make law in substantive areas for the United Kingdom. We should realise that this kind of à la carte Europe, which Britain has pioneered, but in which other countries have participated, has several implications. First, it is not designed just for the United Kingdom. Poland has this protocol, and other European countries, such as Sweden, Denmark and a number of other states of that kind, have also opted out in various areas.
	The second implication of an à la carte Europe is that it does not just give us the right not to participate in certain kinds of integration; we should also respect the right of other member states that may wish to go further. That right should be equally important. It should not have to be haggled about or negotiated, because it should be implicit in how we operate.
	The Schengen agreement, the single currency, the protocol and the justice and home affairs provisions contain opt-outs for some countries, and not only for the United Kingdom. We must also take into account the hugely long transition periods for all the new member states from central and eastern Europe. Even if they want to join the euro, they may have to wait nine or 10 years in order to do so. That is not simply a transition; it means that for a generation there will be a European Union of the kind that we in this House should be much more comfortable about. That is an important point.
	The second aspect to this matter is the wider issue of accountability to the electorate in respect of how our laws are made. Most of the dispute in this area in recent years has been not about the Court, but about qualified majority voting—it has been about the ability to take decisions that are not made unanimously. That covers very important issues, because inevitably when a minority of Governments do not vote for a proposition and it nevertheless takes effect in their nation states, there is no way that the electorates of those countries can hold their Governments accountable, because those Governments themselves were opposed to the measure imposed upon them. That is an argument as to why any decision to move to QMV should be taken carefully. I hope that such a move will take place in as few cases as possible.
	I come to the issue of the Court, because that is what we are really discussing today. The situation is much more dangerous and disturbing than QMV, because a decision made by the European Court is different from a judgment made by a national court. If a United Kingdom court makes a judgment that embarrasses the Government or leads to a law that Parliament never thought it intended, Parliament has the power, if a sufficient majority exists, to reverse that court's decision by making new law. The Supreme Court of the United States has enormous power to determine new law and develop the law in a fundamental and often controversial way. If a consensus existed in Congress—it does not always—and the President and Congress agreed that the Supreme Court had created a situation with which they did not want to live, even the United States has it within its own power to reverse that situation, although that rightly involves a complicated and difficult measure.
	Dealing with the European Court, rather than our national courts, represents a new situation. There is no way in which the decision of that Court can be reversed in a democratic fashion by those upon whom its judgment has an impact. The United Kingdom cannot reverse such a decision by itself, unless it has an enforceable protocol that can prevent the situation from arising in the first place. If the protocol does not apply, or it acts in other areas, a difficult situation arises. In theory, the only way in which a judgment of the European Court, however controversial, could be overturned would be if the Council of Ministers as whole decided to reverse it. That would require not just a majority but a decision by all 27 member states, because any one state could veto such a change.

Michael Meacher: The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) made, as always, an eloquent and passionate speech in support of his fundamental view of the protocol insulating the UK from the justiciable effects of the charter. I start from a very different position on the application of the charter of fundamental rights, so I shall not attempt to counter his arguments.
	I regard this debate as one of the most important on the treaty, because the charter of fundamental rights, the decisions of the European Court of Justice and the tenor and direction of several EU directives are central to the issue of a social versus neo-liberal Europe, which lies at the heart of the European project.
	The charter raises two immediate questions. Although I listened to both Front Bench speeches, I am still very puzzled about why the Government are so adamantly opposed to the application of those rights in this country, especially as every one of the other 26 member states has accepted them without demur, including both right-wing and left-wing Governments. A pragmatic answer—although I am struggling to find an explanation—might be that the charter would ban excessive working hours. The British worker works more hours a week than anyone else in Europe and the CBI would like to keep it that way. It would also permit secondary action in industrial disputes, but at present British workers cannot take such action, although employers can. No doubt the CBI would like to keep it like that as well. The right to take secondary action has never been an issue in any other country in Europe, although it has had enormous implications in this country.

Denis MacShane: Does my right hon. Friend accept that the German constitution forbids some 1.5 to 2 million civil servants and public sector employees from even going on strike? It is the Germans who insisted on many of the safeguards—the so-called lateral or horizontal safeguards—being put into the charter before the protocol question arose, to preserve their ban on strikes, which is far more draconian than anything in the UK.

Michael Meacher: I agree with my right hon. Friend. I am simply searching for an explanation and it may be that I have hit on the wrong one. I hope that I have, because none of the explanations that I can think of appears to carry much weight. If it is a matter of keeping the CBI sweet, I suggest that that is not the job of a Labour Government. Nor is it the responsibility of a Labour Government to implement what Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, once commended to a business gathering as
	"the most restrictive trade union legislation in the Western world".
	We inherited that from the Conservatives.
	It is shameful that we are not proud to welcome the charter of fundamental rights into our own legislation, which every other nation in Europe has taken in its stride as the foundation of a civilised society. I cannot see what the problem is. We have continual discussions about whether it will make a difference, and I am not sure that it would, but I cannot see why we object to implementing it.
	It is far from clear whether the charter will affect UK law. The Government allowed the charter to be made legally binding, but then put forward a protocol that, they argue, will prevent the charter from affecting UK law or at least will limit its impact. However, others have queried the status of the protocol. The Swedish Prime Minister said on 26 June last year that the UK had accepted that the charter was legally binding, which is certainly true, and then added:
	"It should be stressed that the UK was given a clarification, not an opt-out".
	Significantly, when Tony Blair was presenting the protocol to the UK Parliament on the day before, he misread the text —[Interruption.] Well, I assume he misread it. He said that
	"nothing in the Charter creates justiciable rights applicable to the United Kingdom"—[ Official Report, 25 June 2007; Vol. 462, c. 21.]
	However, the text of the protocol actually says:
	"Nothing in Title IV of the Charter creates justiciable rights applicable to the United Kingdom".
	The clear implication is that although one section of the charter cannot be used to create new rights, other sections almost certainly will be. In that respect, I am sympathetic to some of the arguments coming from the Opposition side. But even in respect of title IV on social rights, the text of the protocol states explicitly that the charter does not create justiciable rights applicable to the UK—and several people have quoted this—
	"except in so far as the UK has provided for such rights in its national law".
	It will presumably be left for the European Court of Justice to decide for itself whether the UK has attempted to provide for such rights in its national law and to decide whether the attempt to provide such rights is adequate in the light of the charter. Indeed, it is very difficult to see how this discrete carve-out, so methodically prepared, can work in practice. Firms operating in one member state will be affected, but if they operate in more than one member state, the charter will clearly apply. Migrants coming from another member state to the UK would presumably still be covered. Anyone who travelled to another member state from this country—for health services, for example—would presumably be able to use the charter. Moreover, there are 30 years of EU jurisprudence to say that there can be no two-tier system of European rights.

Michael Meacher: It is always helpful to have an exegetist of such immense academic knowledge as my right hon. Friend and I bow to his superior knowledge. However, whether he likes it or not, I still think that the term has neo-liberal implications—irrespective of whether it started out like that. The treaty also demands the abolition of what are called
	"overtly protective terms and conditions"—
	a highly subjective notion, of course—in contracts that supposedly
	"deter employers from hiring during economic upturns".
	Despite all the spin about flexicurity—I entirely absolve my right hon. Friend of any accusation of using spin—the detailed language in some parts of the treaty suggests—unless it is balanced by a robust and effective charter of rights—a slippery slope on which it would be easy to slide back to the sort of casualisation and insecurity that we saw in previous decades in this country. That is my central point and bottom line in the debate.
	That is all too clearly revealed, to provide one further example, in an EU green paper promoting flexicurity, which says that contractor obligations to monitor employment law among sub-contractors
	"may serve to restrain sub-contracting by foreign firms and present an obstacle to the free provision of services in the internal market".
	That just about says it all. The direction of travel is unmistakable.
	For a final example, under article III-147 of the old constitution, which remains under the reform treaty, the EU would be given power to enforce privatisation in any area of economic activity:
	"A European framework law shall establish the measures in order to achieve the liberalisation of a specific service".
	We have already seen that in action with the EU services directive, which was seeking to extend the private sector into all areas of public service, but at least health care was left out on that occasion. However, a draft EU health services directive was adopted at the end of last year by the European Commission and was designed to create a market in health care.
	I conclude that this abundant evidence of the neo-liberal underpinning of the EU treaties is the overwhelming reason why we need a balance to secure a social Europe, not just a market Europe, and why a charter for fundamental human rights is crucial to achieve that balance.

Peter Lilley: I am not certain that that is true. I turned up to those meetings frequently. They were meant primarily not to allow Ministers to report back but to allow the Members of this House who were sent to the Convention to report back, as they did. Both my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) reached the conclusion that the constitution was not in the interests of the House, and that constitution was fundamentally the same as the treaty that is before us now. The right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) has scored an own goal by referring back to that Committee.

Peter Lilley: My hon. Friend makes an extremely pertinent point with great crispness, as he has throughout these debates.
	The reason, I suggest, that successive Governments of both parties have opposed the implementation in European treaties of a charter of fundamental rights and sought, even this time, to block its effect with a protocol is because we in this country have a pragmatic approach to human rights. We recognise that rights are not absolute. Each human right has to be balanced against another. Free speech has to be balanced against the right to protect one's reputation through the libel laws and so on. Somebody must decide the balance between those rights and, in the past, after the initial interpretations of the courts, this House has decided. Often, deciding the balance has been an intrinsically political decision. I think that that is the point that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) was making.
	The rights as laid down in the charters and conventions are necessarily vague, imprecise and general, so somebody—or some body—must explicate them in accordance with the detailed circumstances in which we find ourselves—they must relate those generalities to the complexities of the life that we live. Some body must do that. In the past, this body, the Houses of Parliament, has ultimately spelled out what rights mean in detail rather than leaving such decisions to general statements from a different body of people: judges, who are unaccountable to the electorate.
	Once we allow lawyers and courts to have the last say, rights will mean what the court says that they do. They will not mean what we thought when we signed up to those rights, or what the people who originally drafted them meant. They will mean what the court says. If that court is the European Court of Justice, there will ultimately be no recourse except in the extreme circumstances when all 27 members can agree to override the Court and change the rights or the constitutional treaties that govern us. That is unlikely and we cannot rely on it.
	I recall an example of how important the discretion of the Court was. Normally, people would expect me to be hostile to the Court. However, on one occasion it was set to adjudicate on a claim brought against the British Government on pension law. It was an extremely important case and £5 billion of tax revenue hung on it. If the decision had gone against the British Government, we would have had to recall Parliament during the recess and bring in new taxes to replace the £5 billion of lost revenue. I had to report to Parliament during my preparations for the event and the Law Officers had to report on the likely judgment that we could expect. They reported that in their view, according to all the legal advice and in the opinion of both the prosecution and the defence, the British Government would lose the case.
	I ventured, rather timidly as a non-lawyer, to suggest to my Cabinet colleagues that the Law Officers had overlooked one thing: the ECJ, although it is a court of justice, is a political court and will always put the interests of the EU first. It was in the interests of the EU not to upset the apple-cart. At that point, we had not ratified the Maastricht treaty. It would have been hugely difficult to ratify the Maastricht treaty if Europe suddenly deprived us of £5 billion in tax, and forced the Government to recall Parliament in the summer to pass £5 billion-worth of new taxes. I confidently asserted that all the lawyers were wrong and that the ECJ would take the politic decision and uphold our position. It did. After that, different Departments from Whitehall used to come and consult me about legal matters because they seemed to think that I had an inner judgment about what would happen.
	We need to remember that the ECJ will have the last say on what rights are. It will make those decisions politically, but without any recourse to the electorate—unlike us.

Richard Bacon: My right hon. Friend made an important point when he said "fully binding". Can he confirm that means that all the charter is justiciable in the European Court of Justice and that there can be no exceptions?

Jon Cruddas: Like the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), I shall focus on the charter of fundamental rights, pose some questions about how effective the protocol will be and highlight key labour market issues that a number of Members on both sides of the House have raised in the debate.
	Four key issues appear to be relevant to a discussion of the labour market elements of the charter. First, to what extent will British workers be denied the opportunity to rely on the charter to interpret and expand existing rights derived from Community law? If British workers are unable to rely on the charter, is it conceivable that EU rights will have a diluted status in the UK? Secondly, to what extent are British workers protected when they take industrial action that an employer claims violates his or her right to freedom of establishment? Is it enough that the workers have complied with domestic law, or is their action vulnerable to legal restraint?
	Thirdly, to what extent are British workers at a disadvantage compared with workers in other member states by virtue of the fact that they are unable to rely on the charter as a defence in legal proceedings against them by an employer who claims that their action violates EU law? In effect, does the opt-out prioritise business rights over UK workers' rights, as a number of my colleagues mentioned earlier?
	Fourthly, we must assume that the charter is designed to add value to existing rights and principles in European law. If it does not, what is the point of it? What do the Government believe has been added and what do they believe will not be applicable in the United Kingdom?
	To pursue those topics, I shall go back to the Laval and Viking cases—important European case law that emerged only at the end of last year, after the signing of what was initially the opt-out and subsequently became the protocol. They have profound implications for European labour law and specifically for this country, with its history of legal abstention, in respect of the role of the law in industrial relations.
	Viking Line is a Finnish ferry company that decided in 2003 to reflag its vessel and employ an Estonian crew on Estonian pay and conditions, cutting its wage costs by some 60 per cent. The case was referred to the European Court of Justice, which ruled that in future any strike action affecting this freedom would have to meet stringent legal tests that the court itself would assess. The key issue, which I find unprecedented, is that no longer does the legitimacy of industrial action rest upon the democratic mandate of the Union derived from its members and regulated through laws determined by the Parliaments of member states. Now it will also need to meet the criteria imposed and assessed by European judges. I see no precedent in domestic strike law in the UK.
	The Laval case is central. As my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet (Colin Burgon) mentioned, Laval is a Latvian company, which in 2004 posted workers from Latvia to work on building sites in Sweden. The Swedish construction union asked the company to agree to the existing collective agreement within the building sector. The company refused, operating instead under the Latvian agreement, including a lower pay scale that undercut the Swedish workers' wages.
	Subsequently the court ruled, essentially, that the company's freedom to provide services in any member state should not be restricted by compliance with non-statutory collective bargaining agreements in one member state. Again, that has huge implications for an industrial relations system that is built on legal abstention and free collective bargaining, as in the British case.
	Critically, the court argued that because the EU posted workers directive set out minimum rights, it was unreasonable to force the company to comply with further non-statutory agreements at local or national level. So, instead of EU legislation setting minimum standards, which has been the argument over the past 20 years, going back to 1988 and Jacques Delors coming to the TUC, we now face the threat of those standards being seen as a maximum instead of minimum criteria across the EU.
	All of us on the Labour Benches should be acutely aware of the implications for further labour market deregulation. Those two cases, among others, give rise to widespread concern that in recent case law the EU has been engaged in a race to the bottom in terms of labour market standards. Indeed, it could be argued that the very notion of a social dimension to the European project, a cornerstone of the Labour party's strategy over the past 20 years, is under threat. That deserves profound discussion in this place, not least because of the centrality of that concept in redirecting our party's approach to Europe more generally.
	Let me deal specifically with the protocol and workers' rights. The first concern is that the protocol could restrict the protection of workers' rights. However, I understand the Minister's position that this is not an opt-out, and I hope that he will make it clear in his reply that it will not affect the way that the title IV rights are applied to EU law. That has been his approach throughout the Committee stage, but we need to hear a far broader outline of the Government's position as there is confusion about that on all sides.
	I note that many of the articles contained in title IV specify that the rights that they set down are defined as they exist in
	"Community law and national laws and practices".
	The Minister may argue that therefore the protocol is simply a truism. That would raise the question why the protocol was negotiated in the first place. Leaving that aside, I notice that article 31 does not contain such limited language. That article deals with
	maximum working hours. I hope that the Minister will clarify that the protocol was not negotiated with a view to evading the article 31 rights.
	A particularly important question for the labour movement is the purpose of paragraph 2 of article 1 of the protocol, which has been quoted extensively during the debate. It states:
	"In particular, and for the avoidance of doubt, nothing in Title IV of the Charter creates justiciable rights applicable to the United Kingdom except in so far as the United Kingdom has provided for such rights in its national law."
	In short, title IV is singled out for a unique provision within the protocol. Title IV, as we know, is the section of the charter entitled "Solidarity" and it contains what we would call workers' rights, such as the right to information and consultation at work, the right to collective bargaining and collective action, protection from unjustified dismissal, fair and just working conditions, the prohibition of child labour, and so on. This provision has never been fully explained in the House. In fact, when the former Prime Minister reported back in his statement of 25 June last year he mysteriously omitted the words "Title IV of" when reading out the protocol to hon. Members. Perhaps he simply made an inexplicable error of fact, but we need to explore the Government's reasoning more fully.
	As I understand it, the existing charter was referred to by the Advocate-General in recent BECTU litigation extending paid holidays to people with less than 13 weeks' service. It is unclear whether this will be possible in future in the British context, or whether any attempts to use the charter in this way would breach the provisions of the protocol stating that charter rights are not
	"justiciable rights applicable to the United Kingdom except in so far as the United Kingdom has provided for such rights in its national law".
	It might otherwise be possible to use charter rights to strengthen existing rights in various areas, including information and consultation. The charter provides that workers or their representatives must be
	"guaranteed information and consultation in good time".
	On protection in the event of unfair dismissal, the charter provides:
	"Every worker has the right to protection against unjustified dismissal, in accordance with Community law and national laws".
	On fair and just working conditions, the charter provides:
	"Every worker has the right to limitation of maximum working hours".
	The information and consultation regulations, the redundancy consultation procedures and the TUPE regulations do not guarantee that workers will be consulted in good time, the TUPE regulations do not protect every worker from dismissal, and the working time regulations do not ensure that every worker has the right to limitation of maximum working hours. The last point was raised by the European Scrutiny Committee of the House of Commons, and according to the Committee, the charter could be used to challenge the implementation of the working time directive, as in the BECTU case.
	That might also happen in one of the other member states, but because of the opt-out it may not be possible to mount such a challenge from the United Kingdom, where arguably the need is most acute, given the long hours culture. This gives rise to the possibility that established rights under EC law could have diluted content in the United Kingdom—a view reinforced by the Committee's apparent concern that ECJ decisions on social policy in cases involving other countries could creep into UK law.
	Perhaps the fundamental question is whether it is acceptable, especially for a Labour Government, to put workers' rights on a different footing from the freedoms of employers, which are contained in title II and are thus not covered by paragraph 2. I would like to think that the Government will not in future seek to celebrate the way in which they have excluded British workers from protections afforded to European workers, and that they will not make a virtue of this to the CBI and the press. We need to be sure that title IV does not have some kind of separate status from the rest of the charter. I am worried that a clever corporate lawyer might try to argue that, as the protocol states only that title IV cannot create new justiciable rights, by implication title II can therefore do so.
	This is an important matter for the Minister to clarify. Many of the counter-arguments that I have heard so far seem to amount to saying that the provision makes no difference whatever. Either way, many of us would also like to hear why such an apparently specific proviso was ever negotiated in the first place and, perhaps more importantly, that workers' rights will not be treated in that way in future.

Denis MacShane: If the hon. Gentleman cares to examine what John Bright and his great friend Cobden did, he will find that they were huge supporters of free trade and rightly argued for international institutions that would open countries up to it. However, we cannot have good words and nice policies unless we have a mechanism of enforcement, and since day one of the European Economic Community, the European Court of Justice has been that enforcement mechanism. I fully accept the points made by my hon. Friends about the Laval and Viking cases, but on balance the court has been good for workers and for Europe. If we adopted the Opposition amendment, we would throw out the proverbial European Court of Justice baby with the bathwater of the whole European Union.
	We have heard some remarkable language in this debate. The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) talked about a foreign jurisdiction; actually, a British judge serves on the Court. Furthermore, the World Trade Organisation is a foreign jurisdiction—any treaty organisation into which we freely enter and whose adjudicating panel's or Court's binding rulings we accept is a foreign jurisdiction. For heaven's sake, I thought that Britain wanted to extend the concept of the rule of law globally and internationally into as many different areas as possible.

Mark Harper: Having listened to the debate and the detailed arguments on both sides, it once again proves exactly how constrained we are in having to fit our deliberations into the straitjacket of the timetable motion that the House passed last week. Moreover, later on, the detailed discussion in Committee will be shoehorned into just one and a half hours.
	I listened carefully to the Lord Chancellor's opening remarks and to other contributions, but I must confess that I remain confused about exactly what the charter of fundamental rights brings to the table. The Government seem keen to argue that it brings nothing new and that there are no new rights, which is in line with their negotiating position when they argued against the charter having legal force. However, as we have heard, the European Commission makes it clear that new rights will be in force. If that is not the case, I hope that when the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice), winds up the debate she will confirm that tomorrow a letter will be winging its way from the Lord Chancellor to the European Commission to point out that the information on its website is incorrect and there are no new rights. If that letter does not find its way there, with a placed copy in the Library, we will know that the Minister agrees that there are indeed new rights. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) said, there is at least one new right—an unlimited freedom for scientific discovery. During that discussion, we discovered that the Liberal Democrats are very keen on unrestricted scientific experimentation, which will disappoint those who care about animal welfare.
	During the negotiations on this part of the European treaty, the Government made it clear that they were unhappy with it, and it is worth putting one or two of those comments on the record. Baroness Scotland, speaking for the Government, said that making the charter binding was
	"not desirable because a text incorporated into the treaties"—
	my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells made it clear that the charter is an integral part of the treaty with exactly the same legal force as the rest of it—"requires legal precision." She continued:
	"The charter uses a breadth of language well suited for a political declaration".—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 29 November 2000; Vol. 619, c. WA142.]
	The right hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) said, when speaking on this matter,
	"the people who say that it is a great idea to have a charter of rights do not seriously appreciate what the implications would be if it were incorporated wholesale in the treaty...My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has made it absolutely clear that we shall not do that...people want a charter of motherhood and apple pie at one level, but are not willing to recognise what full incorporation would signify."—[ Official Report, 18 June 2002; Vol. 387, c. 244.]
	That is important. The scope of the charter means that several articles are very broad and have potentially significant effects on the rights of this House and of our democratic structure.
	One or two Members have drawn attention to article 3 on the right to integrity of the person, which could affect abortion law. My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) referred to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which will be debated in this House when it has finished its passage in the other place. We know that many of the votes on that legislation will be free votes for Members of this House because they are on conscience matters, and we know about the passions that will be engaged in our constituents on several of those important issues. My hon. Friend made it clear that it will not be a forward step if decisions on issues such as abortion are taken out of the hands of this House and given to unelected judges.

Mark Harper: In that case, what is the purpose of having this article in the charter? If it will have no effect and the court will not use it to change reality on the ground in any of these countries, what on earth is the point of it, and if there is no point to it, why on earth are we effectively putting it into British law?
	Some other incredibly important articles could have a huge impact on our domestic policy. Article 21 of the charter states that there should be no discrimination on the grounds of nationality. That is not limited to European states, as I read it; it means that there should be no discrimination on the grounds of nationality at all. That will have a huge impact on and wide-ranging consequences for our benefit system and our tax system. Again, it might transfer huge amounts of power from this House—people accountable to our electors—to judges. What the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) said about judges not all being accountable is not entirely true. Many judges in the United States are accountable because they are elected, so they have to listen; that is not a very good idea. I do not want people who have to worry about what electors think to make decisions in criminal cases. The right hon. Gentleman made that point about judges and it is not true.
	I do not want us to give rights and powers to take important decisions that should rest with this House to people who are not elected and are unaccountable. The right hon. Gentleman raises his eyebrows, but that is what the charter does. If it does not, it has no effect at all, in which case there is no point in bringing it into law. The Lord Chancellor seemed to be trying to have it both ways, as was ably pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere.
	I draw hon. Members' attention to article 50, which is the right not to be tried or punished twice in criminal proceedings—the double jeopardy principle. The UK Government have already amended the rules on that, and one can take one's own view on it—it would allow the killers of Damilola Taylor to be brought to justice—but such a decision would not be possible if that article were enforced. Such decisions are matters for this House, and for Ministers who are accountable, but we will be handing those decisions over to people who are not accountable.
	Finally, I would like to pick up the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere finished on. From discussions over the past few weeks we have seen the regard in which hon. Members are held. People will only turn out in elections when they think that there is something significant at stake. We saw that in the French presidential elections, where there was a clear choice between the two candidates and turnout reached 80 per cent. I suspect we will see something similar—perhaps not as high as 80 per cent.—in the US presidential election this year. There will be a clear choice. We have already seen a significant number of voters turning out in the Democratic primaries who have not turned out before. The people they are electing can make a real difference and there is a real choice to be had.
	In this country, we have seen turnout decline. I hope that voters will think that there is real choice at the next general election and that there will be a competitive election in which turnout goes up. But if electors think that the decisions they take in those elections and that the people—and the Ministers—they send here are increasingly unable to alter either the way in which our laws are made or the direction of our country, they will become even more disillusioned. They will not come and talk to us, they will not vote in elections and they will increasingly turn their attention to hiring lawyers and fighting cases in front of the European Court of Justice. That would not be a welcome step, but a retrograde one. It is exactly what will happen if we cede these powers, which is why I want the House to support the amendment standing in the name of my right hon. and hon. Friends.

Michael Connarty: I am very happy to follow the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper), whom I have not caught speaking in the House before, nor followed a speech of his. I will read his other speeches with some attention to see whether his views are as consistently right-wing as they have been this evening.
	I have no problem in supporting the Government in the debate about this aspect of the treaty. I have no fear of the European Union. I respect the views of those who also serve on the European Scrutiny Committee, but sometimes I worry about the tenor of the contributions of the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory). They show a paranoia about the institution of the EU, which, despite the views we may have about these elements of the treaty, or the future position of the European Court of Justice, has not done any damage to the good people of this country. That is the truth of it. Nor has it done damage to the place where we live. We live in a Union of half a billion people.

Michael Connarty: No, I am not going to take interventions, because I hope to leave more time for the winding-up speeches than I would if I took my full 12 minutes.
	What does the charter of fundamental rights say to anyone? Who is interested in it, and who is afraid of it? I will tell hon. Members who is afraid of it: the person who stood as the presidential candidate in Serbia, who would have taken that country back under the influence of Russia. It was what the charter of fundamental rights and the European Union stood for that won the election in Serbia for those who want to get closer to the EU, and we hope, join it, alongside other former parts of the fractured former nation of the Republic of Yugoslavia. I have no fear of what the EU holds out to our citizens, as well as to others.
	I would like to talk about what the treaty does, with reference to the consolidated texts of the EU treaties as amended by the treaty of Lisbon. For example, article 3 has been referred to by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children as representing a fundamental move forward. Paragraph 3 of article 3 says that there will be
	"solidarity between generations and protection of the rights of the child."
	Paragraph 5 refers to
	"eradication of poverty and the protection of human rights, in particular the rights of the child".
	That is the first time such a provision has been put down in the laws of the EU. It is an important matter because we saw in Romania the terrible sight of children chained to potties on stools in the so-called children's homes that existed there before that country entered the EU. If such conditions alone are ended by the treaty, it is one worth signing.
	Article 6 refers to the charter of fundamental rights, which is important because it shows that it is central to what the European Union will be about. Paragraph 3 of article 6 says
	"Fundamental rights...shall constitute general principles of the Union's law."
	How can we be afraid of that? Articles 145 to 150, under title IX, "Employment", deal with employment rights. I cannot see how anyone can object to a treaty that includes such provisions which will be binding on all nations. My hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas) spoke about the difficulties of Latvia and Sweden, which did not have an understanding with regard to how people have common rights that transfer across the Union.
	I come to article 153—the original article 137 of the treaty—under title X, "Social Policy". For the benefit of those who want to read our debates, and I hope that many will, I want to put on the record what that article says. It refers to
	"(a) improvement in particular of the working environment to protect workers' health and safety;
	(b) working conditions;
	(c) social security and social protection of workers;
	(d) protection of workers where their employment contract is terminated...;
	(f) representation and collective defence of the interests of workers and employers, including co-determination...;
	(g) conditions of employment for third-country nationals legally residing in Union territory
	(h) the integration of persons excluded from the labour market"—
	we are always talking about integration, and wondering about the 2.7 million people who are on incapacity benefit, and why that figure has grown from several hundred thousand—
	"(i) equality between men and women with regard to labour market opportunities and treatment at work;
	(j) the combating of social exclusion;
	(k) the modernisation of social protection systems without prejudice".
	Those points are not just in the charter of fundamental rights, but in the treaty. They are things worth voting for, and I hope that we will do so.
	Everyone says that it is all about the European Court of Justice—this big bad organisation that will somehow take decisions from a malicious point of view. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) pointed out earlier, its judgments normally are on the fair side of the equation and are not made in a malicious way that is disadvantageous to the people. The hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison), my colleague on the European Scrutiny Committee, says that there is no right of appeal. We know of a case that came before the Committee, concerning a journalist from Belgium. His house was raided and his equipment taken because he had put out a story about corruption in the fraud office of the EU. He went to the European Court of Justice and lost. He then went to the European Court of Human Rights and won. He got €30,000 in compensation and his costs paid. The court found against OLAF, so there are places to which one can go in the European Union if the European Court of Justice denies one's human rights. That is why human rights are so important and central to the Bill.
	The charter of fundamental rights is an important document. Somebody asked why it was not a single document—it is. Here it is—I am holding up the charter. Anyone can get a copy—it is readable, accessible and says some things that we should be proud to state about the European Union of which we wish to be part. Those things will be law once the treaty is passed.
	Ministers have said that the charter contains nothing additional, but it does. According to the Law Society, which analysed it purely from a legal point of view, it
	"contains many rights similar to those set out in the ECHR, in addition to further rights and principles already recognised in EU law."
	The rights will be additional but they are already in EU law. However, the article continues:
	"Until now the Charter has had no binding effect, but this will change as a result of the Treaty of Lisbon."
	The charter will be binding, and I find that attractive for reasons that I will outline. Article 4 of chapter I is entitled, "Prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". Such a prohibition may not exist in some countries that might be considering joining the European Union. Holding up as a flagship guarantee a provision that people cannot be abused, tortured or punished inhumanely by their Governments will attract people to share our view of Europe, rather than that which some other regimes currently hold.
	Article 5 of chapter I prohibits forced labour and people traffickers. Article 10 of chapter II is entitled, "Freedom of thought, conscience and religion". That is very important. Article 23 of chapter III deals with gender inequality and article 24 is entitled, "The rights of the child". Those are fundamental matters in a charter of which we should be proud. Surely hon. Members approve of article 25, about the rights of the elderly and article 26, about the "Integration of persons with disabilities".
	In chapter IV, articles 27 to 33 deal with employment rights, including family and maternity rights, and the rights that my colleagues who spoke about employment law discussed.
	Chapter VI contains articles 47 to 50 and includes article 48, "Presumption of innocence and right of defence". That seems to me to be an anti-sharia law article because people are not presumed innocent under sharia law. People are presumed innocent under our law in the EU and that is fundamental, especially when considering some of the jurisdictions that want to join the Union, which take a different view about whether sharia or EU law should apply.
	In chapter VII, article 53 protects fundamental freedoms and article 54 deals with the prohibition of abuse of those rights. We should include all such provisions in anything that we wish to become the law of the EU. Indeed, they are a part of EU law.
	Some hon. Members have asked why we should have a protocol when, in the European Scrutiny Committee's judgment, it did not have any of the opt-out powers that were originally discussed. As early as July, the Government began to admit that we were right and that the protocol did not constitute the opt-out that was originally intended. Paragraph 28 of our third report of the 2007-08 Session, which was published after taking evidence from Ministers, states:
	"It seems to us that a judgment of the ECJ interpreting a measure of Union law in a case brought in another Member State would form part of the body of Union law which the UK courts would be obliged to follow in the UK so as to ensure the consistent application of Union law throughout the Union."
	We believe that that is the correct interpretation. If there were such judgments on the working time directive, that on agency workers and others that were mentioned, which are part of EU law and in the charter, I believe that they would be binding in this country as well as in others.
	The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) was correct when he said that we kept emphasising to the Minister—the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) especially pressed the matter—that the only way in which the charter would not apply would be to pass a protocol, which would take effect, "notwithstanding the treaties or Union law generally". If Union law generally and the treaties are binding, the charter is also binding.
	I believe that that is a good thing. I repeat that I am worried that the trade union movement has reacted so badly to what appeared to be a signal—a flourish—to the CBI that somehow we would not grant the same rights in employment law to everyone. If we rejected the treaty, we would deny the charter to every other country and trade unionist in Europe. Some need it much more desperately than our unions. It is a question of solidarity. The trade union movement should not be afraid of the impact on human rights or workers' rights through accepting the treaty, for which I shall vote.

William Cash: I shall speak briefly, partly because I do not have much time. I will have an opportunity to say more later. Following the speech of the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee allows me to say that my concern is that he is right, because the Committee has examined the position and been through an enormous number of other legal authorities. There is no doubt that the advice that the European Scrutiny Committee has given Parliament is valid. If matters continue they way they are, the Government, who believe—probably not sincerely because they did not want the charter in the first place—that they are managing to put a roadblock in the charter's way, will end up having to accept it.
	Conservative Members take a different view, which is that the charter should not apply in any event. When we consider amendments in Committee later, I will explain the way in which my amendments can help the Government to achieve their objectives. I may comment on other amendments, too. However, the bottom line is that Conservative Members are united on one central principle: we do not believe the Government's line that their actions can prevent what we fear from happening. We all agree that our argument stands up in the interests of the people whom we represent. There is unity among Conservative Members about that, but we have a slight problem that we must resolve in the next one and a half hours.
	I do not need to add any more until I get to the nub of the issue, and the nuts and bolts, which I will explain when we discuss amendments. I am extremely grateful for a marvellous opportunity to speak for one minute more than I did on the previous occasion.

Dominic Grieve: The brevity of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) always comes when he makes those points with which I most agree. He is right in his analysis of the debate. It is extraordinary that the quality of the debate rose dramatically when the Lord Chancellor sat down. Until then, we were treated to a characteristic campaign of explanation that the charter was a wonderful, innocuous document and that those who could not appreciate its merits suffered from the usual Conservative paranoid delusions about its content.
	We had to wait until the end of the debate to hear the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), who correctly analysed the pros and cons of the changes that the Lisbon treaty will effect. I am only too eager to debate that. We know from listening to the debate between hon. Members in the same political parties that the subject can provoke interesting discussion on a topic of great importance for this country's future. The Lord Chancellor—and Government Front Benchers generally—does not want anyone to realise that that discussion is happening. If I have a complaint about the process of these debates, whether today's debate or last week's debate on criminal justice, it is that those on the Treasury Bench reduce the issues to a series of facile soundbites and show an unwillingness to engage, but then complain when the public exhibit what they describe as "signs of paranoia". I have to say that I might start to become a bit paranoid if I saw individuals systematically attempting to obfuscate and missing the point so much.
	We had a good debate once the Secretary of State had sat down, first with a speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington). Then the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) made an important contribution on the role of the charter, which in his view is innocuous. I disagree with him about that. The reason, which I mentioned in my intervention on the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane), to whom I shall return, is that we have to ask ourselves what the charter's purpose is. Let us forget about our protocol for a moment, and ask why the charter is there and what it is designed to achieve.
	To respond to the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk, my problem with the charter is, first, that it has been placed at the heart of an institution whose primary purpose is not the promotion of human rights. That was picked up in a series of comments, including by the hon. Members for Elmet (Colin Burgon) and for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), and the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher), all of whom raised their deep concern about the extent to which the European Union's agenda might be harmful to some of the social policy issues that they want to promote. I do not want to get involved in the detail of that debate, but they were right to highlight the potential impact of European Union laws and policies in areas of concern to them. Again, the Government's unwillingness to engage with the issue troubles me very much, because it is plainly relevant to how the European Union develops.
	I return to the point that we have in the European convention on human rights a document that commands total acceptance in all parts of the House, to which all European countries that are members of the EU are adherents and which provides a well established formula for defining human rights, in wording that is different from the charter of fundamental rights. The point is not just that the charter has extra text covering rights that are not covered by the ECHR—that might be an interesting topic of debate—but that the wording is different. If the Government are so insistent, in their project to introduce a new Bill of Rights, that they are going to keep the ECHR text within the HRA because they do not wish to differ from it, that prompts the question, which remains unanswered: why are they so comfortable with the European Union doing the very thing that they do not wish to see done domestically? I hope very much that the Minister will rise to the occasion and deal with that point.

Dominic Grieve: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The situation raises difficulties of interpretation. I am not saying that there are no arguments to the contrary; what I am saying is that the Government should say why the arguments that they have put forward in the context of a potential domestic Bill of Rights, which they have indicated they wish to introduce, apparently do not need to be considered in the context of the charter of fundamental rights. As yet we have received no answer whatever to that question, because the debate has, I am afraid, so frequently been reduced to such facile levels.
	The second issue is the protocol and the impact of the charter of fundamental rights on our national legal and parliamentary processes. The Government negotiated the protocol for some purpose. However, having listened to what those on Treasury Bench have said on the matter, one begins to think that the protocol is merely a fig leaf, whereas it was originally sold as a protection. The protection that the Government wanted concerned their anxiety to persuade the public in the UK that the charter could not be used to have an impact on, effectively, domestic legal areas.
	As European law is expanding—one of the purposes of the treaty of Lisbon is for that to happen—and moving into, for example, areas of crime and justice, which we debated last week and on which I disagree most profoundly with what the Government are allowing to happen, it must be inevitable that the charter of fundamental rights will apply even in crime and justice areas that fall within the European Union's remit, if the Government opt into any of them. Again, we have yet to hear any explanation from the Lord Chancellor or the Minister of how the Government think that will operate in practice. If the protocol is in fact worthless—as in my view it is—there will be instances where the European Union and the European Court of Justice will use the charter of fundamental rights to affect the development of UK domestic law in areas such as criminal justice to which we have opted in. It may be argued that that is a good thing; indeed, some Government Members, and certainly Liberal Democrat Members, seem to think that that would be a good development. However, the issue at least merits some debate, which is the very thing that we have not had from the Government.

William Cash: I beg to move amendment No. 84, in page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Article 1, paragraph 8, replacement Article 6 TEU relating to rights, freedoms and principles; and
	(ii) '.

Michael Lord: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Amendment No. 217, in page 1, line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Article 1, paragraph 8, replacement Article 6 TEU, paragraph 1, concerning the Charter of Fundamental Rights; and
	(ii) '.
	Amendment No. 85, in line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Article 1, paragraph 9, amendments to Article 7 TEU relating to breach of principles; and
	(ii) '.
	Amendment No. 125, in line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Article 2, paragraph 18, inserted Article 5b TEC (TFEU) relating to the combating of discrimination; and
	(ii) '.
	Amendment No. 129, in line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) Article 2, paragraph 34(b) to (d), amendments to Article 17 TEC (TFEU) relating to the rights and duties of citizens of the European Union; and
	(ii) '.
	Amendment No. 194, in line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) the Protocol relating to Article 6(2) of the Treaty on European Union on the Accession of the Union to the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms; and
	(ii) '.
	Amendment No. 196, in line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) the Protocol on the Application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union to Poland and to the United Kingdom; and
	(ii) '.
	Amendment No. 228, in line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) the Protocol on the Application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union to Poland and the United Kingdom—
	(a) Preamble, tenth paragraph stating that references in the Protocol to the operation of specific provisions of the Charter are strictly without prejudice to the operation of other provisions of the Charter; and(b) Preamble, twelfth paragraph stating that the Protocol is without prejudice to other obligations devolving upon Poland and the United Kingdom under the Treaty on European Union, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and Union law generally; and
	(ii) '.
	Amendment No. 229, in line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) the Protocol on the Application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union to Poland and the United Kingdom, Preamble, eleventh paragraph stating that the Protocol is without prejudice to the application of the Charter to other Member States; and
	(ii) '.
	Amendment No. 203, in line 12, after 'excluding', insert—
	'(i) the words "Title IV of" in paragraph 2, Article 1 of the Protocol on the Application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union to Poland and to the United Kingdom; and
	(ii) '.
	Amendment No. 27, in line 13, after second 'to,' insert—
	'(i) the Charter of Fundamental Rights; and
	(ii) '.
	New clause 6— Disapplication of the Charter of Fundamental Rights—
	'Notwithstanding any provision of the European Communities Act 1972, nothing in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union of December 7th 2000, as adapted at Strasbourg on December 12th 2007, shall be binding in any legal proceedings in the United Kingdom and shall not form part of the law applicable in any part of the United Kingdom.'.
	New clause 12— Charter of fundamental rights—
	'For the avoidance of doubt, no decision of the European Court of Justice which is based on any application of the provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union to interpreting or applying the law of the European Union shall have any force of law or effect in the United Kingdom.'.

John Redwood: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for putting together and tabling so many excellent amendments, which, if we had the time to discuss them, would indeed provide us with the line-by-line scrutiny that we are being denied. Does he agree that the Government do not seem to grasp that the simple question is: "Do you wish to be governed by elected people in Parliament, whom you can sack, and from whom you can get a different answer following a general election, or do you wish to be governed by unelected people on the continent whom you cannot sack, and from whom you will never get a different answer?"? Is not that the issue?

John Redwood: Tonight's debate, like many of these debates, is about where power should rest. It is about democracy itself, especially in the context of the excellent amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash). I should like the amendment to go a little further, because I should like to see the sovereignty of a Parliament clearly reaffirmed and re-established in the laws that we enact when trying to tackle this rather difficult and refractory treaty.
	This Parliament made itself great over many centuries because campaigners of all parties and of none—Whig and Tory, Labour and Liberal and Conservative—came together so often to assert the right of elected representatives in this House of Commons to make the laws and take the right decisions, and to face their electors in turn on the hustings so that their work could be adjudged good or bad and the necessary decisions could be made about the futures of MPs individually and of Governments that had exercised the powers of this House.
	There have been two great movements. There has been a great movement over many decades to ensure that we reach the point where all adults have the precious advantage of the vote, so that they can choose those elected representatives and decide whether to remove them when they fail to do their jobs in the imagined way. The other great movement was to ensure that the powers were in this Chamber and in Parliament as a whole, so that here the laws could be chosen, here they could be amended, and here they could be struck down. What the Government are asking us to do tonight is suspend that right, in perpetuity perhaps, and certainly for a very long time—there is no fixed time for this treaty—so that in future such decisions may in many areas be made by unelected people in a European court. They may, as far as the British people are concerned, in future be made by unelected people sitting in Council chambers, often meeting in private and reaching decisions in private.

John Redwood: The right hon. Lady is a little cleverer than that: she knows that that is not the official position of the Opposition party, and nor is it the case that I happen to be making at present. Her history is wrong, of course: we did not give all those powers away at the beginning when we joined something called the Common Market in common parlance, or the European Economic Community as set out in the original treaty. That was not the deal offered to the British people when they last had a vote on this issue in 1975. It so happens that I voted "no". I have always since accepted the verdict of the British people. I am sure that they voted for a common market, and that is what I would like them to have. They voted for co-operation and collaboration while our country retained its veto. What I dislike about the deal under discussion—the clauses before us tonight highlight this—is that our veto has been given away needlessly, when the Government had the veto to veto surrendering the veto; the Government just had to say "no", and they would not have had so many law-making powers brought in by the back door by this treaty and this proposed legislation.
	I, like my party, say that this deal is many steps too far—it gives away far too much of the power rightly accumulated by Parliament over the centuries to do good for the British people and to respond to their will and their wishes. The right hon. Lady has in a previous intervention in our debates today come up with a clever argument. She says that the magic of this particular block of work is that at last the EU will have to submit itself to the human rights court and the human rights convention that many states in Europe have signed. What she omits, however, to tell the House in that very partial interpretation is that that in no way detracts from the power of the European Court of Justice to keep on advancing its power at the expense of the British people and their elected representatives in this Parliament assembled.

Jim Murphy: Simply refusing to respond to such points is not an approach that will not get us through the rest of Committee proceedings.
	We also heard a wide-ranging and passionate speech by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), who spoke from his great experience on Europe gained over many decades. He also referred to the experience of 1848, and spoke passionately about the Soviet era. Let me gently say to him that he has always reminded me of a Conservative version of Leon Trotsky, a man of whom it was often said that he was so far-sighted in his predictions that none of them had yet come true. On Europe, that is indeed the case— [Interruption.] I happily give way.

Jim Murphy: Not at the moment; I shall make some progress.
	If the charter were removed from the scope of the Bill, someone in Ireland, France or any other member state would look to the charter as an accessible statement of their rights, while a UK citizen have to trawl through a plethora of treaties, judgments, cases and agreements. Surely that would be an absurd position for us to place our citizens in.

John Healey: I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) for taking such an interest in what has been going on in Wiltshire. I said a moment ago that it was a matter for the proposing local authority how it chose to seek views and to represent them as part of its proposal. To answer his question directly, we, as a Government Department, did not undertake any direct opinion polling or checking of residents' views on the proposal. It was never our intention to do so, and I do not think that anyone believed that we would.

John Healey: I thought that I had been clear. A range of views was expressed—some were supportive and others were concerned. Several important agencies and bodies, with which the council needs to work increasingly closely in developing and providing better services, were strongly in favour of a county council because they perceived the ability to work closely with the local authority as being more likely in those circumstances.

Robert Key: Annexe B of the Department's impact assessment lists 53 organisations, which are described as "stakeholders" and were consulted. They include Sport England, the Highways Agency and the Audit Commission. In its victorious proclamation that it would go ahead, Wiltshire county council listed only the primary care trust and the chambers of commerce as being in favour. In other words, 51 organisations did not agree.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Interventions need to be short if some hon. Members from Wiltshire are going to be heard.

Bob Neill: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. It may engender a modicum of silence from further down the Chamber, and it proves the virtue of doing one's local homework. It also sits rather ill with the Government's contradictions on this issue, because this is part of a process of reorganisation that will involve a number of areas. Back in 2006, the previous Secretary of State, who is still in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Transport, described the whole question of local government reorganisation as a great distraction. I suspect that she was nearer the mark than her successor and the current ministerial team, for the reasons that we have set out.
	May I return to the real concern? If one is going to make changes, there must be strong evidence to support them. Such evidence has not been set out in respect of this order. The suggestion that it will bring significant financial advantage depends on a particular case that has been put together, and it is challenged by a number of the other parties. When one examines the detail of that case, one sees that it rests on a number of assumptions about how the transitional costs work out and what the savings will be. Those are not borne out by close examination of the evidence.
	I was interested to hear the Minister say that there will be a particular treatment of grant. I assume it will apply across the piece, but that was the first time that we had heard about it. That grant treatment was not taken into account in the proposal in terms of setting out the savings. The districts have put forward their own contention, which would tend significantly to undermine the one put forward by the county council; the point being that there is conflicting evidence and, to return to my principal point, there are no objective criteria by which to judge it. It is thus difficult to see how the case for change can possibly be made against that background. We will return to that issue throughout this process, because the same principle seems to apply across all the orders that the House will have to consider in due course.
	One final thing worries me about the Minister's stance, although I appreciate that he may have inherited this situation. He said that there must be consistent evidence, but a few breaths before, he said that the evidence will vary from authority to authority; so it is difficult to have any great faith in the process.
	I should also ask some questions about the order itself, because it concerns me. The Minister hits on a point about this not being a takeover. He has been at pains to stress that, and it is set out in the explanatory memorandum. The reality is that if he looks at it fairly, it is difficult to see how he could say to anyone outside this process that it is anything other than a takeover, given that the construction of the implementation executive is that the chairman, who has the casting vote, shall be the leader of one particular authority—of the county council, as opposed to anything else—whether or not there is consensus. There is no obligation to seek consensus. The fact that there has been willingness on the part of the members of all the district councils to try to work together to make the best of the bad job that has been foisted on them is to their credit, rather than to the credit of the Government, who have set forward this unsatisfactory proposition. It is difficult to sell a built-in working majority in favour of one partner as a collaboration of equals, rather than a takeover.
	I am also concerned that the work of the implementation executive will not be adequately scrutinised. That is important because it is at the time of the transition that the hoped-for savings are most likely to be lost and costs are most likely to overrun. Scrutiny at that stage is therefore especially important. There is, interestingly, a duty on the districts to co-operate on implementation of the transition plan in both paragraph 6.7 and paragraph 11, but surprisingly there is only an option for collaboration on scrutiny. I do not understand why the scrutiny provision—in paragraph 8.6—is not also an obligation. The provision on scrutiny is not as rigorous as that on the duty to take executive action, but both are important. From all that I know of what happens in Wiltshire, the districts will ensure that there is proper scrutiny, but the orders do not guarantee that—and they should. That is a technical concern about the nature of the orders.
	The political composition of the implementation executive also raises concerns. It is an odd creature, because it does not follow the normal requirements of proportionality. It provides certain guaranteed places, but there seems to be no precedent for that, and I would be interested to know why it has been set up in that way. It is perhaps significant that the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments says, of an identical provision in one of the other orders:
	"The use of the powers in the manner proposed is an unexpected use of the powers conferred by section 13(1) of the 2007 Act".
	It is an odd departure, and I would like to know the justification for it. On the face of it, it appears to be an arbitrary use of the procedure.

Julia Goldsworthy: As I said, that is a matter to be decided at the local level. I have absolutely no intention of prescribing from here what should or should not happen— [Interruption.] I am asked again from a sedentary position what we would do. We would not have had this process in the first place, but we think it absolutely right that local areas should have a say on how they would best like to be governed. We should celebrate diversity in how that is achieved, because Wiltshire is very different from Cornwall, for example.
	I would like to follow up some of the issues that the Minister raised. He was careful to be very clear that the order is not simply a takeover by the county council. However, with this and other orders, real concerns remain that that is what will happen. Unfortunately, the way in which the order is set out will only underline some of those concerns. I am grateful for the Minister's clarity about the legal reasons, but I wonder whether he can do anything further to counter the perception that, as a result of the order, we will be left with a takeover.
	I also want to follow up the issue of the duty of co-operation between district councils and county councils in the implementation executive. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) has already raised the issue of the lack of parity and an equal duty to co-operate in the implementation executive and in the scrutiny process, but there is also a wider issue. Why is there no duty on the Secretary of State to co-operate to help local authorities to achieve their aims of reorganisation? That lies at the heart of the matter, because perhaps with the authority we are considering—this will certainly apply in other cases that will be discussed in the days ahead—there is real frustration because the orders will not help local authorities to achieve all they would want from the reorganisation process. There needs to be a duty to co-operate on Ministers so that they cannot stand in the way of authorities trying to achieve higher ambitions.
	This is only the beginning of the process. The position is difficult because we do not really know what will be in the detail of transitional orders further down the line. We do not know what vision the implementation executive will seek to deliver; there is no sense of what the implementation team will be asked to do; and there is no idea of what the scrutiny process will be or what will be considered. The Secretary of State must give the sense that the process will not be directed from the Minister's desk—there must be a duty to deliver what the proposals want to achieve.
	Another key area that flags up the kind of barriers that could arise is parish elections. Parish elections took place in 2007. My understanding is that the order will delay any further elections until 2013, after the new body is in place. Given that a new authority is likely to seek to give greater control to parish authorities in taking on new roles and responsibilities, I am concerned that parish councillors elected with an entirely different remit will be asked to take on those new powers. Given that there will be a boundary review and all-out elections to the new authority in 2009, will the Minister comment on what scope there might be to enable parish elections to happen at the same time as those unitary authority elections to allow people to seek election knowing what their terms will be?
	On the boundary review, will the Minister tell us the time scale under which the Electoral Commission wants to operate? My concern is that we are debating the order close to the deadline that the boundary committee for England has set to be able fully to undertake a boundary review process in time for the 2009 elections.
	I hope that the Minister will also respond to the concern about the capacity of the boundary committee to undertake other boundary reviews in areas where there are likely to be other unitary elections in 2009. Will it have the capacity to deliver that number of reviews within the necessary time scale? For a lot of authorities, that will be important in demonstrating that a new authority will be elected. With the existing boundaries, if the change does not take place, that will be a real hurdle.
	Fundamental issues need to be resolved. Otherwise, it will be difficult for the process to have a successful outcome. Locally, many people are disputing whether the changes will bring improvements. If they are correct in disputing that point, either the Government have not assessed the proposals properly or the potential lack of success might be down to failings in the process that we are debating. As we have heard, members of the district authorities are participating in the process to try to make the best of a bad job. The Government have a responsibility to ensure that they are doing their best to make something that is practicable and workable, too.

Robert Key: Wiltshire never has been, is not now and never will be an easy county to administer. We are proud of our county, but we are not quite sure why. There are as many reasons as the county has areas, districts and river valleys. That pride is very real—we even have a new county flag after all these centuries.
	Wiltshire is a disparate county. It is described as chalk and cheese, with sheep farming in the south and dairy in the north. It is the home of moonrakers: the sort of characters who are anti-establishment, or certainly anti-taxman. Salisbury plain is the great divide in Wiltshire, occupied by the Army for 100 years—some say to keep apart the people from north Wiltshire and south Wiltshire.
	Wiltshire has no natural boundaries, unlike Cornwall. It has no natural county town, unlike Devon, which has Exeter. It has no homogenous identity, unlike, for example, Kent. None of the boundaries of the different authorities seem to coincide and they have not for a very long time—even the ecclesiastical one. The county of Wiltshire is not in the south-east and not really in the south-west either. It may be in what could be described as central southern England, which is pretty unromantic. Wiltshire is an edge county and Salisbury is an edge city. If we are anything, people in Wiltshire still belong to Wessex, the ancient kingdom that is a romantic idea as well as a fact. Interestingly, the recent creation of an Earl and Countess of Wessex showed a deep understanding by the royal family of the nature of the county and of how we feel about where we are.
	I believe that unitary authorities can work well, in the right place. I used to be a local government Minister, so I have fairly wide experience, at least across England. I know that it was right for Swindon, for example, to become a unitary authority. The structure might have worked in Wiltshire when it was proposed, some 12 years ago, that we should have two unitary authorities—one for north Wiltshire and one for south Wiltshire. However, when we look at the context of the order and the proposed revolution, it is important to remember that, before the 1974 local government reorganisation and in what is now Salisbury district council, we had a Salisbury city council, and rural district councils for Salisbury and Wilton, Amesbury, and Mere and Tisbury.
	That was localism, and local decision making. All four authorities had planning powers, although they did not include the county council's reserve powers on highways and minerals, for example. Back in 1974, we saw the beginning of the end of true local democracy when those four councils became one. Now, Wiltshire's four district councils are to become one, and using the same sort of dodgy maths that the Government are using to support the order, some might say that the people of south Wiltshire were 16 times better represented in 1974 than they will be by the new Wiltshire council.
	The point about stakeholders has been argued about quite a lot, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) and my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) will expand on it. However, it is terribly important to remember that only 53 per cent. of county councillors voted in favour of the unitary authority proposal. None of the district councils voted for it, and most of the district councillors voted strongly against it, unless they happened to be the double-hatted councillors who served on both local authorities—a practice of which I disapprove very strongly. One of the few benefits of the proposed system will be that we will no longer have double-hatted councillors.
	The Minister said that part of the enterprise was a "toss-up", and he is right, although some people might also describe it as a gamble. The explanatory memorandum states that one of the proposal's criteria is "strategic leadership" and it talks about a "reinvigorated strategic partnership". That means that the existing Wiltshire strategic partnership will be broken up into a public service board and a Wiltshire assembly of 20 area boards. The Minister said that he believed that the new 20 area boards would be the answer to local participation in the democratic process. It is true that local people will be able to influence local events and to help shape their communities. The police and the primary care trust will be able to join in, along with the parish and town councils, but will they be able to decide anything? No: they will be barred from making decisions. That power will reside exclusively with the 98 Wiltshire councillors, who will take all the decisions.
	For the time being, the councillors will be stuck with existing local plans and development frameworks, so the planning function will remain within the existing district council boundaries. However, the area planning committees that have given decision making to local regional bodies will go; as a result, decisions will be taken by the smaller number of Wiltshire councillors who will represent the district council areas that we have now.
	The memorandum states:
	"The strong link to place, through the establishment of 20 "Community Area Boards", provided compelling evidence that a unitary authority would not be too remote from all of its communities."
	Well, I do not know whom that evidence compelled, but it does not compel me or my constituents. It is likely that the unitary council will save back-office costs such as human resources costs. If it saves the forecast £75 million a year, however, it will be the first time in recorded history that a local government reorganisation has saved anyone a penny.
	I oppose this order in principle. I think that it is wrong for Wiltshire, but I expect that the Government will get their way and so it is my duty to make the proposal work to the advantage of my constituents. If anyone can make this extraordinary idea work, it is Councillor Jane Scott, the leader of Wiltshire county council, who is a hugely talented person. If the order goes through I shall support her and wish her well in the enterprise. I shall do my best to minimise the pain and realise any gain.
	In Wiltshire we take the long view. The first MP for Salisbury arrived in this place in 1265. I have been the holder of that office only since 1983, so I shall try to remember the old political adage: "Things are never as good and never as bad as they seem at the time".

Michael Ancram: I am glad to follow my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key), who strongly set out why we should oppose the order. He has been a Wiltshire Member of Parliament for rather longer than I have, so I bow to his superior knowledge of the history of Wiltshire, even if neither he nor I quite go back to 1215.
	I congratulate the Minister. If he loses his seat at the next election he will have a fine career as a stand-up comic; never have I seen anyone deliver such rubbish with such a straight face. I shall not repeat arguments that have already been made, but I want explain the situation for the following reason. I went to see the Minister's predecessor, as did my colleagues, and we also went to see the Minister himself. We told him about the state of public opinion in the county and he listened, as did his predecessor. Neither of them gave any indication that they would contradict what we were saying, yet suddenly, out of the blue, we received what I can only describe as a perverse decision in relation to the evidence we had given them.
	I remind the Minister of what we said. We told him about the Ipsos MORI poll, which is worth looking at again, because he has created the impression that it was not definitive. In fact, 78 per cent. of people said that they wanted the status quo, but with a bit more co-operation; 71 per cent. felt that a single council for Wiltshire would be remote and less in touch with local people and local issues; 64 per cent. saw Wiltshire as too big to be served by only one authority; and two thirds of the respondents said that the current system of local government worked well for them. If that is not a clear indication of public opinion against the proposal, I do not know what is.
	We all received many letters and I received a petition, too. I did not receive a single letter in favour of the unitary council proposal, but I received dozens of letters against it, so I do not know where the impression of popular support has come from. At our meeting with the Minister, we told him that our understanding was that only two parish councils of all the 80 parish and town councils in the county were positively in favour of the proposal—only two, yet the Minister tried to give the impression this evening that local communities were in favour.
	All the district councils were originally against the proposal. There has been a little movement since, but although they are co-operating now they basically believe that it would be bad for local government in Wiltshire. Three of Wiltshire's MPs have opposed the unitary order throughout; my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) will have to decide how he will vote tomorrow, but three of us have made our position clear.
	The Minister said that the county council wanted a unitary authority, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury has just said, only 25 of the 49 county councillors voted for the proposal—hardly a massive majority in favour, yet that is the piece of opinion on which the Minister founds his case.

Andrew Murrison: It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram). I cannot compete with 1265, but the battlefield site of Ethandune, near Edington, is in my constituency. That is where King Alfred defeated the Danes in 878 and set up the kingdom of Wessex. If anybody knew about local government reorganisation, it was King Alfred.
	Let us be clear: there is no support worthy of the name for the proposal in the county of Wiltshire. There are no grounds for the Minister's opinion, given in his letter of 25 July 2007 to Wiltshire county council's chief executive, that the proposals would
	"command a broad cross section of support from a range of stakeholders".
	Furthermore, the breezy assertion that there would be
	"some support from the general public"
	is true only in the most literal sense, with "some support" meaning more than no support.
	The November summary document continues in the same creative vein. Any reasonable comparison of the document with the raw data would reveal that there has been considerable licence in the interpretation and collation of material.
	I do not know whether the Minister has been through all the responses. The Department was good enough to allow me not only to read them, but to photocopy them, and I have been through them all. They confirm my belief, from what my constituents have been telling me for many months, that there is no significant body of support, however he defines it, for the proposals before us. May I challenge the Minister to say how he is able to draw the inferences presented in the November summary document from the responses that he received and I photocopied? If he cannot do so, the second criterion in the October 2006 invitation for unitary bids is not met.
	For a more reliable litmus test of public opinion, we must turn to the MORI polling data collected in June 2006. In his letter of 22 November 2007, the leader of West Wiltshire district council, Councillor Graham Payne, says:
	"I can see no reference in your report about the MORI poll that was undertaken to assess the views of the public in Wiltshire."
	That is the case. I asked the Minister specifically about that and he seemed to be under the impression that in some way that poll was reflected, but in fact it is not.
	Wiltshire county council misused the information in the same way as the Department for Communities and Local Government appears to have been creative in its interpretation. West Wiltshire district council referred the matter to the district auditor. On 30 July 2007 the district auditor stated in response:
	"I agree with you that it"—
	a press release issued by the county council—
	"represents a misinterpretation of the MORI findings. It is highly selective in its use of information from the poll and excludes information that would provide a more accurate representation. As such, I consider that it fails to comply with the Publicity Code in that it is not objective or balanced",
	yet that is the body on which the Minister is relying almost wholly in making his assertions.
	The matter of consultation is by no means trivial. It is especially important in Wiltshire. Over the past months and years, and certainly since 2001 when I was elected, we have become accustomed to what might be called sham consultations. We have had them particularly in relation to local health care, where it appears that the results of the opinion survey have been more or less determined before the exercise started. That has led to the most disastrous consequences in respect of the scorched earth policy being conducted by Wiltshire primary care trust and, before that, by its predecessor bodies.
	This has taken place at a time when we are all trying to establish public confidence in democracy and engage people with politics and with the formulation of public policy in important areas such as local government, health care and practically every other arena. Instead, a climate of cynicism has been engendered among the public, and who can blame them if they put a great deal of time and effort into responding to consultations in good faith, in the belief that those who make a decision at the end of the day will pay close attention to what they say and act upon it? Unfortunately, in the local government consultation, like others in Wiltshire, those who are entrusted with making policy sadly seem to bat away all the time and effort put in by our constituents. They should hang their heads in shame.
	Understandably, there has been considerable judicial interest in the matter. Will the Minister outline the possible outcomes of the Congleton and Shrewsbury judicial review and what implications various possible outcomes may have on the local government review process? Will the Minister say why the estimates of costs and benefits have differed structurally from one unitary proposal to another, thus disallowing meaningful comparison? That is particularly important in the present context because Somerset, just across the border—a county that is in many ways similar to Wiltshire—has had a very different outcome in terms of its unitary bid.
	Will the Minister tell us why the transition costs, recurrent costs and savings, pension liabilities and extra costs for area governance and pay harmonisation have not been included in the cost appraisal for Wiltshire? Given the absence of a budget for area governance, what did the Secretary of State have in mind when talking in July 2007 of a "real opportunity" for people to "shape their communities"? Will the Minister confirm that area governance under the proposals will be no more than an unfunded "selectocracy" with very little accountability?
	In July 2006, the former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government called local reorganisation "a great distraction", and in March 2007, in the Government's own review, Sir Michael Lyons criticised restructuring and recommended more joint working. That is precisely the solution that Wiltshire residents have said they want, and precisely what the MORI polling data confirmed that they wanted. The  Local Government Chronicle in May 2007 reported the Treasury fear that unitary bids were a "waste of time" and that it
	"simply cannot afford to bear"
	the financial risks involved. In 1974, local government was paralysed by reorganisation for up to three years, and I have to say to the Minister that there is good evidence that we are seeing a repeat performance right now in Wiltshire.
	My constituents want local government to deliver quality services—which, by and large, it does. However, residents in council after council have responded to the Minister's consultation by saying that they do not want this expensive, remote, self-licking lollipop that is threatening 1974-style paralysis for months on end. Even at this late stage, I urge the Minister to think again.

James Gray: I rise briefly to explain why, unlike my three hon. Friends who have spoken convincingly of their reasons for being strongly opposed to the order, I shall take a position of principled abstentionism when we vote on this matter tomorrow. The position that I have held throughout the discussions on local government reorganisation in Wiltshire is that there are strong arguments in favour of single-tier unitary authorities. Those are the arguments that we advanced when we were in government and in precisely the Minister's position. When I was special adviser to the Secretary of State for the Environment, as the post was then known, we brought in unitary status for Swindon. It is nice to see the hon. Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove) in her place this evening. We also abolished the country of Berkshire in the same way, and brought in a variety of unitary authorities across England. They were very much welcomed by the people when we did so. We also abolished the county councils in the whole of Scotland.
	The powerful argument for doing that, which we advanced from the Bench on which the Minister is now sitting, was that it was a fundamentally good Conservative principle to have less government and fewer civil servants servicing it, with lower council tax as a result. There are clearly strong Conservative arguments in favour of single-tier unitary authorities. There is no question about that at all, and in some respects I support what the Government have been saying in that regard.
	Wiltshire plainly has good local government at the moment, however; I differ entirely from the Government in that regard. Our district councils do a very good job. They are close to the people, and they make good decisions, by and large, although there are some exceptions. I am glad to say that North Wiltshire district council had the good sense recently to throw out the Liberal Democrats who had run the council very badly for the past 10 years, and the council is now doing an absolutely first-class job.
	So we have good local government at local level provided by the district councils, as well as by the town and parish councils, which provide a strong service across North Wiltshire. Localism is terribly important. As my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) commented, Wiltshire is an astonishing county geographically, split by Salisbury plain. There is no real homogeneity in the county, and it is therefore vital to have local government, which is provided at the moment by the district councils.
	Given the Government's majority, it is extremely likely that the order will go through. Now is not necessarily the time to make strong, principled arguments on either side; we should be doing precisely what the Conservative-controlled North Wiltshire district council has done and Wiltshire county council is doing. We should say, "This thing is going to happen. The Labour Government have created it. There is no question but that there will be a single-tier unitary authority in Wiltshire. We should not fall out with each other over it or battle over who will be councillors in a particular place or how functions will be carried out. We should set in place structures so that the localism that currently exists through district councils is continued in one way or another."
	County Councillor Jane Scott, to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury paid such warm tribute a moment ago, has that very much in mind. She realises that it is vital that there should not be a centralised structure, based in Trowbridge, that ignores local authorities, and that the structure should take real account of very local concerns by setting up appropriate other structures across the county. That is why I am ready to accept what the Government propose. I cannot bring myself to go into the Labour Lobby and support them—there are strong arguments against the proposal—but I will abstain during the deferred Division tomorrow.
	The Minister might like to refer to one matter in his response. The Boundary Commission will examine local government boundaries in the run-up to the elections for the single-tier unitary authority. There is one boundary in Wiltshire that to me is more important than all others—the eastern boundary that borders Swindon. We love Swindon, a first-class town in many ways, but we do not want it to move into North Wiltshire in any shape, size or form. Will the Minister please reconfirm in his response that when the Boundary Commission considers the borders, it will be specifically tasked with doing that within the current rural county of Wiltshire, excluding Swindon? Will he confirm that the border between Swindon and North Wiltshire will remain the same? I think that that will be the case, but I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed it.
	Leaving party politics and strong statements aside, we need to find the best means of delivering good, first-class services at a local level in Wiltshire and a lower council tax. I say to Councillor Jane Scott, and the new-look local authority when it is set up, that the reason why I do not oppose what she proposes is that I look to her to provide better services for my people in North Wiltshire—above all, at a lower rate of council tax.

Robert Syms: I hope that my colleagues from Wiltshire will forgive me for speaking for a minute before the Minister responds. I am a former leader of North Wiltshire district council and I served 12 years on the county council. My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) mentioned the winding-up of the rural districts and boroughs. There are many proud towns in Wiltshire that still have the sign of when they were boroughs in the middle ages. It is a pity that the winding-up occurred; it took local government away from people.
	As leader of North Wiltshire district council, I was always aware that it was an administrative area without any natural affinity, apart from being in Wiltshire. However, it had one big advantage: we discussed areas that we travelled to and knew. Wiltshire county council was a great, strategic council but those of us from the north of the county would often talk about areas in the south that we rarely visited. It can take 1 hour 20 minutes to get from Cricklade to the south of Salisbury and we did not go to the south often. I fear that the new arrangements will be unwieldy. It is a long way from Tidworth to the Somerset boundary, and I do not think that we will be close enough to the people. I am suspicious of the savings figures; I do not think that we will make savings. I hope that things work out well. I am sure that there are some very good councils in Wiltshire, but I fear that we are moving local government too far from the people.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I propose to put together the Questions on the four motions.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Keith Vaz: I am most grateful for the opportunity to raise some very important issues concerning the Solicitors Regulation Authority, known as the SRA. I am pleased to see the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice), on the Front Bench this evening—I say evening; of course I mean this morning, at such a very early time. I wish to make a declaration of my interests. I am a non-practising barrister and I am married to a solicitor who is also a part-time judge. My wife also formerly served on the Law Society Council.
	The SRA was established two years ago last month and operates with a budget of £55 million each year. It is therefore timely that we should explore its work so far, and assess its achievements. I also want to raise some concerns regarding the issue of race and ethnicity. Previously, the regulation of solicitors was dealt with by the Law Society itself, which is the trade union for solicitors. It was rightly suggested in the Clementi report that the Law Society lacked the independence, and therefore the necessary legitimacy, to regulate properly. It found fault with the principle of one lawyer examining the work of another, and so the SRA was born. The SRA remains part of the Law Society but operates completely separately from it.
	There are 16 members of the board, nine of whom are solicitors. I have serious concerns about the representative nature of the board's membership, while not casting any aspersions on those appointed. Only one is from an ethnic minority background; the rest, I have to say, consist of the great and the good. However, I am worried that in this day and age, with a board so recently created, it is no way near a representation of the race and gender of the legal profession today, and I understand that it cannot be changed until December 2009.
	The SRA should act in the public interest as both a regulatory and preventive body, examining accusations of fault, writing regulations and ensuring resolutions. It should be fair to both the public and solicitors, and should ensure that all firms are treated equally and in the same way. A number of issues have been brought to my attention concerning the cases that the SRA intervened in. In such circumstances, an intervention essentially means that firms are closed down.
	An independent consultant, funded by the SRA, prepared a detailed report as long ago as July 2006, which concluded that a disproportionate number of black minority ethnic firms were investigated by the SRA. In 2006, 62.8 per cent. of the 59 interventions made by the SRA were against subjects who were Asian, Asian British, black or black British, mixed or unknown, whereas only 37.3 per cent. were made against white or white European solicitors, despite the fact that that group makes up 78.6 per cent. of the solicitor population. The SRA has accepted that there is a serious problem; it has also accepted that it has not done enough to address it. I congratulate it on that candid admission.
	In a letter to me on 28 September last year, Andrew Garbutt, a quality consultant at the SRA said that
	"you will note from these reports that Black and Minority Ethnic solicitors are disproportionably represented in regulatory decisions compared to their overall representation in the profession, and the SRA is exploring the reasons for this disparity."
	Firms contacted me asking why it was that they found themselves constantly under lengthy investigations with no end in sight. The figures are quite stark. I wrote to the SRA on a number of occasions but was unable to receive a satisfactory explanation for the figures that I had been given. On 10 October 2007, I was told by Antony Townsend, the chief executive of the SRA:
	"We share your concern about the disproportionate representation of BME solicitors in regulatory matters over several years...It is for that very reason that the SRA is addressing the matters as one of its early priorities."
	I worried about what it deemed to be a priority when it became clear to me that the SRA produced report after report stating that there was a problem without taking any action.
	As the Under-Secretary will no doubt know, I called a meeting on 16 October 2007 in the House. It was attended by Mr. Townsend, several different and well regarded groups, from the Black Lawyers Association to the Society of Asian Lawyers, and several solicitors' firms, which had concerns about the way in which the SRA disproportionately affected the work of BME firms. Although the meeting was useful in showing the SRA the extent of concern that many organisations and firms felt, I was unimpressed with what Mr. Townsend promised. It was clear that, although the issue was brought to the SRA's attention in July, nothing of substance had been done to try to tackle that serious problem by October 2007, when we held the meeting. The idea of a working group, to be chaired by the president of the National Black Police Association, was proposed by those attending the meeting but not acted upon.
	I wrote to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, requesting a round table discussion with the Department and the SRA to take the matter further. Subsequently, the Under-Secretary chaired a meeting during which SRA board chairman Peter Williamson accepted that the SRA had failed to do enough to deal with that major concern. His admission was most welcome. I also want to thank the Under-Secretary for attending the meeting. She did not interfere with the proceedings, but acted as an honest and effective broker. She chaired the meeting with skill and a clear understanding of the issue of race and ethnicity, doubtless drawn from her experience and the concerns expressed about other issues by her constituents. The SRA's previous hesitation in the matter may have unwittingly contributed to racism and discrimination towards BME solicitors.
	Since the meeting with the Under-Secretary, we have made some progress, which is very positive. The working group met for the first time on 17 January 2008. At that meeting, it was agreed that Anesta Weekes QC, one of the country's few black Silks, should be invited to be the independent chair of the working group for future meetings, and that Ali Dizaei, a distinguished police officer from London and president of the National Black Police Association, would be the vice-chair. In addition, it was agreed that Lord Herman Ouseley, whose record of achievement on race is second to none, would be invited to act as an independent reviewer of the group's work.
	Among other things, the working group will be responsible for drawing up and agreeing terms of reference for an independent review, which will carry out statistical analysis; re-examining the details of SRA interventions into BME firms or cold casing; examining the composition of the SRA board, which currently has only one BME member; considering the composition and training given to SRA casework staff, and trying to build trust between the SRA and BME solicitors.
	I propose tonight that we go a step further. In my view, the Under-Secretary should appoint an independent monitor to oversee the work of the SRA, so that if any discrimination is found, it is acted upon immediately. It cannot be right that investigations continue into firms if racism or discrimination is found. Let us be clear: there was an important step forward; a clear recognition by the SRA that there was a need to tackle that serious problem.
	There are other issues of concern that go beyond race. I have been told by those who have dealt with the SRA that it is slow to deal with correspondence and cases. I can tell the House from my experiences that, until the Under-Secretary's intervention, I had tremendous difficulty in obtaining responses to my letters, and I expect the correspondence of an MP to be a high priority for any organisation and confidentiality to be maintained.
	After writing to the SRA about a specific firm, the confidentiality of the letter was breached as it became clear that caseworkers other than those involved in the case were aware of the details. When a firm is being investigated, it clearly impedes their work and costs a huge amount of money. It is only fair that a solution is found as quickly and simply as possible.
	Decisions must be swift, and the actions and advice must be consistent and professional. Some firms have been advised that they have no right of appeal after an SRA adjudicator has made a decision. However, it appears that others have been told differently and that consumers have also been told a different story. I should be grateful if the Minister could confirm whether solicitors or consumers have a right of appeal after SRA adjudication. The livelihoods of solicitors can be at stake in such matters, and the questions raised by the public must be answered.
	The SRA feels that one of the reasons BME firms experience a higher number of interventions than white European firms—its classification, not mine—is that they are in general smaller and that smaller firms are investigated more. That cannot be viewed as a satisfactory explanation. Why should small firms be at a higher risk of being shut down than big firms? In this context small is not beautiful, if small firms as opposed to large firms are immediately put at risk and small BME firms face a double whammy.
	 Legal Week published an article examining the work of the SRA one year after its creation, in which Chris Carroll, a managing partner of the large City firm Travers Smith, commented:
	"although I think separating the bodies is important, it has not had much impact other than having to announce to our clients that we are now regulated by the SRA. I just do not come across them, and I certainly do not regard them as any more fearsome."
	It is obvious from that statement that large City firms do not feel the bite of the SRA; and yet smaller BME firms have told me that they feel hounded by it, with investigations continuing for years.
	It should be incumbent upon the regulatory body to investigate all accusations and all firms to the same extent, and not to ignore the work of large City firms because they are too powerful and difficult to get results from. The SRA has accepted that it does not approach the "magic circle" firms in the same way, but has said that that is because it does not have the budget necessary to do the job. Yet surely it is just as costly to investigate a BME firm, sometimes for up to four years, as it would be to investigate a City firm for a couple of months.
	It seems that the only explanation for the situation is the one that was given to me during a meeting in my office in December with Peter Williamson, the chairman of the SRA board, who told me honestly that the reason large firms do not get investigated in the same way is that they will often give in to complainants in order to keep them as clients, which is something that smaller firms are less likely to do. In other words, money talks. If the issue is also one of resources, I ask the Minister to look into it and provide more funds if necessary; if it is not, there are more serious questions that must be asked.
	Finally, I want to mention diversity in judicial appointments. It is clear that the issue is no longer that BMEs are not entering the profession; rather, there is an issue of progression. The Government set up the Judicial Appointments Commission in 2006 to reform the system for choosing judges. Yet since those reforms, all the judges who have been appointed have been white, male and, on the whole, privately educated. The situation was in fact much better under the Lord Chancellors Irving and Falconer.
	The Society of Asian Lawyers has passed me a report that claims that in many of the recent appointments the winning candidate still fits the establishment profile, and in one case does not fit the guidelines issued for that position. If that is the case, how can that person be said to be appointed on merit? In this day and age, I am surprised that only 10 of the 108 High Court judges are women and that only one is from an ethnic minority. Why has the Ministry of Justice not dealt with the issue, which has been raised year after year and which it recognises to be important? After all it is dealt with in statute, in provisions under part 4 of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005—I know that to be the case, because I and others put them in there.
	We are posed with the age old question: quis custodiet ipsos custodes, or who guards the guardians themselves? I know that the Minister will be keenly watching the progress of the SRA over the coming months. I sincerely hope that it will not be necessary for her to intervene again. It is surely right that we ensure that the public and solicitors get the regulation body that they deserve. For that body to work, the solicitors and the consumers have to trust it. This trust must now be earned.

Bridget Prentice: I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) on securing this important debate. He is, and has been, assiduous in pursuing his concerns about black and ethnic minorities both in and outside the legal profession, and his measured approach tonight reflected that.
	As my right hon. Friend said, the SRA was established by the Law Society as an independent body to regulate solicitors in England and Wales in preparation for the new regime that we will introduce under the Legal Services Act 2007. As he said, the Act built on the recommendations of Sir David Clementi, including the requirement for legal regulators to separate their regulatory and representative functions. That is a central principle of the new framework. It is vital to both consumers and the professions that it is clear when a body is acting as a trade union and when it is acting as a regulator, when it should be seen to be separate and independent of that function.
	We are encouraged by the fact that both the Law Society and the Bar have taken steps to establish independent regulatory bodies before the Act comes into force. The Law Society has delegated all its regulatory powers to the SRA apart from rule-making, which it cannot lawfully delegate at present. It has also ensured that it retains no concurrent jurisdiction on regulatory issues. The Law Society has no power to direct the SRA's board to take a particular approach, either in individual cases or in respect of policies and procedures.
	The ethos behind the Legal Services Act was to put the consumer first, and to improve the way in which legal services are provided for the public. I am pleased that the SRA is embracing that ethos by giving the public information to help them make better decisions when choosing solicitors. However, I also recognise that, as my right hon. Friend said, the SRA has a real responsibility to the professions that it regulates to ensure that it acts effectively and fairly. As my right hon. Friend acknowledged, it is a relatively young body, and part of its future role will be to review the current procedures and identify areas in need of improvement. I am sure that it will be interested in the views of the solicitors whom it regulates, and will engage with them fully.
	The Law Society requires the SRA to respect the principles of good regulation—of consistency, transparency, proportionality, targeting and accountability—but those principles must also be translated into the way in which the SRA regulates on a day-to-day basis.
	Let me now deal with the issue of race and the SRA. I am well aware of my right hon. Friend's anxiety about the way in which the SRA has handled the concerns of black and minority-ethnic solicitors in regulatory matters, and I was pleased to be able to facilitate the discussions shortly before Christmas to which my right hon. Friend referred.
	Although the SRA has taken some action following the 2006 report, I agree with my right hon. Friend that it has taken far longer than anyone would want for it to draw up a structured plan with clear objectives and deadlines. However, I am glad that the work has begun to gather some impetus, and that the working group given the task of dealing with it has met and agreed on a way forward. I am also glad that the independent review will examine many of the issues raised by BME stakeholders at the meeting before Christmas, including membership of the SRA board. As my right hon. Friend will know, the board was appointed after open competition in accordance with the Nolan principles.
	I believe that the working group will make real progress. It is important for BME stakeholders who feel strongly about the way in which the SRA has handled investigations to play an active role, and for everyone to work together to ensure that conduct matters are investigated in an open and transparent way. Going forward, this work will ensure that the SRA is trusted by solicitors and consumers alike. As my right hon. Friend knows, I cannot comment on individual cases or alleged breaches of confidentiality, but I know that he has written to Antony Townsend, the chief executive, about the length of time it has taken to receive replies to correspondence and I hope that he is getting a better service as a result.
	The time taken to resolve intervention cases and to respond to queries are issues the review might want to consider. In particular, it might want to examine the types of firms that are investigated and whether there is a link to the resources available to the SRA. The resourcing of the SRA is, however, a matter for the Law Society not the Government, because those bodies are funded by the profession itself.
	As my right hon. Friend has stated, the actions of the SRA should be consistent. He has raised the issue of conflicting advice given to firms on appeals. I have also raised that issue with the SRA, and there is no "yes or no" answer. Whether there is an appeal depends on the circumstances. For example, the SRA has told me that there is no internal right of appeal against a decision to refer a solicitor's conduct to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal because those decisions are not adjudications, but decisions to prosecute. The SDT must itself decide whether there is a prima facie case before a prosecution proceeds. Findings and orders of the SDT are subject to appeal to the High Court, of course. Nor is there an internal right of appeal against a decision to exercise statutory powers of intervention into a solicitor's practice. Challenges to intervention decisions must be brought in the High Court in accordance with the provisions of the Solicitors Act 1974. However, there is an internal right of appeal against a decision to impose a condition on a solicitor's practising certificate and there is also a statutory right of appeal to the Master of the Rolls. I know that my right hon. Friend has written to the Lord Chancellor on this issue and he will respond to him more fully as soon as possible.
	I do not think that it is necessary for an independent monitor to be appointed to oversee the work of the SRA. The chair and vice-chair of the working group—two splendid people, as my right hon. Friend said—will be independent and they will be able to review the processes. That will also be carried out by the independent reviewer, Sir Herman Ouseley—an excellent advocate in this area, as my right hon. Friend said. I will, of course, monitor progress and outcomes of the work being undertaken by the SRA because I believe that that work is essential, and I will look with interest at the conclusions of the review, and at how the SRA tackles the issues that come out of that.
	My right hon. Friend has raised the point that investigations should be suspended, particularly if the review finds evidence of discrimination. I believe that doing so would raise serious consumer protection issues, and we would need to consider that very carefully. In the longer term, oversight will pass to the legal services board and I will ensure that the new board, once it is established, is aware of the progress and outcomes of the review.
	I wish to turn briefly to legal diversity, an area that I consider to be of great importance as my right hon. Friend is aware. The key to a diverse judiciary is a diverse legal profession. There are still huge barriers, as my right hon. Friend pointed out. We are committed to working with, and challenging, the professions where we can to deliver improvements in diversity. That is why I wrote to the top 100 law firms and top 30 chambers in November 2005, and then to the next 100 firms and next 30 chambers in April 2006, asking them to publish their diversity policies and statistics on their websites. I was not hugely impressed by the response. Changes take time and they will not be achieved overnight. The fact that there was some reluctance will not prevent us from continuing to press on these measures.